Adobe Lightroom gets magic eraser and it’s impressive

Adobe is adding some new generative AI tools to Lightroom that aim to make the photo editing platform easier to use for both professional creatives and inexperienced users, even on a phone. These include an in-development object removal feature that is rolling out in beta and new AI lens blur effects that are now available to all Lightroom users.

“Generative Remove” – powered by the company’s Firefly AI model – is now available to test in early access in Lightroom’s mobile, web, and desktop apps. Described as Lightroom’s “most powerful removal tool yet,” the feature allows users to “paint” unwanted objects or people into images and then delete them with the click of a button.

It’s very similar to the “Magic Eraser” tools provided by Canva and Google’s Pixel devices, or the one-click deletion capabilities that Adobe demonstrated last October for Project Stardust — an “object-aware” photo editing engine in development that is also powered by the company’s Firefly AI. . Unlike Photoshop’s popular Content-Aware Fill tool (which attempts to fill blank spaces by combining nearby pixels), the Generative Remove tool generates three different variations that replace the removed object, allowing users to select the option they find most natural.

The live demo Adobe gave me over a video call was one of the most impressive I’ve seen of Adobe’s Firefly products. The tool removed all the example objects in their entirety, leaving no extraneous artifacts behind, and generated backgrounds to replace them – although not a problem. necessary representation of what is behind the object – seemed natural enough to be convincing. The process of professionally removing objects from photographs used to require quite laborious masking and editing workflows, which not only makes a boring task easier, but is also less daunting for new users.

The Generative Remove feature is free to use during the beta, after which it will likely adopt the “Generative Credit” system used by other Firefly tools, with credit packages currently starting at $4.99. When the feature is available, it will also support content credentials, which apply a metadata label to images edited using Adobe’s generative AI tools.

A new AI-powered Lens Blur tool is also available today for all Lightroom users. This feature can apply a variety of different blur effects to any part of an image with a single click, and automatically estimates the depth of field of view to make the background blur look more natural. Lens Blur works like a filter – users can apply an automated preset or adjust specific parameters until they get the desired effect.