P: Removing background?

[chandypi]

I remove the background in my portrait photos a lot. I use Lightroom CC for the initial edits, but I have to take it to Photoshop to remove the background properly. For initial review pics to be sent to my client, I prefer a simple workflow that I can accomplish in Lightroom. [Even Canva has a 1-click background remover (which I use many times when Photoshop can be cumbersome in my workflow)]. When pressed for time, I use the "mask" feature to select the background and decrease exposure or change color. But this impacts the edges of my subject. Removing the background cleanly and adding a simple background would be great from inside Lightroom. This will help me accelerate my workflow tremendously! Do you have any tips or workarounds?

[chandypi]

Just to clarify, I use Lightroom web and desktop version which is synced to Adobe cloud. It used to be called Lightroom CC (Creative Cloud) earlier, but now I think the CC is dropped. I don't use Lightroom Classic regularly. 

[Aleke]

Hi @chandypi, welcome to the Community!

The only thing I can think of is to use Masks to select the entire background, like you already do, and to get a better selection you can use brushes or tweak the "Amount" slider at the top of the panel.

I'll move this post to the "Ideas" board so the team can consider your suggestion for future releases.

Thanks! Alek

[chandypi]

Replace background: I process about 500+ pics after every studio photoshoot in Lightroom (cloud). In many of these pics, I have to replace the background with a different one, or create a transparent background so that the pics can be used in other downstream activities (brochures, blow-ups, etc.). Today, once the client picks the pics to be processed further, I have to take these to Photoshop and do the remove background operation there (I must say the latest update of remove background in Photoshop 2025 is impressive!), but when I have to do this to about 50-100 pics, it gets really painful (I might explore batch processing in Photoshop). But if the background replacement can be done in Lightroom itself, that would be great! Applications like Canva and others provide this feature out of the box. I think Lightroom should provide this in an upcoming release.

Auto cropping around subjects: In my pics, I have several extraneous entities in the frame (beauty dish, background extremities, etc.). I have to go to each pic and crop the pic around the subject so I can present these pics to the client. It is painful if I have to do it for 100s of pics for each client engagement. Can you please add an auto crop (and auto straighten) feature into Lightroom.

AI for photoprocessing: With the use of AI growing rapidly, could you add a feature where I can select a subset of, say, 10, processed pics, then the 'AI engine' should understand how I processed these pics. Then I'd like to 'apply' this processing to the following 500 pics. Obviously these pics have been taken in very similar lighting conditions, same subject, etc. I have tried "Auto" and "copying" settings, but this is not 'smart'. It simply pastes the previous pic settings to the new one. I'd like to see some 'smartness' in the copy feature.