Adobe updates Lightroom with ‘generative remove’ and lens blur tools: Digital Photography Review

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With ‘Generative Remove,’ Lightroom users can highlight an area they want to remove, such as this person in the background, and then let Lightroom fill in that space with what it thinks should go there.

Image credit: Adobe

Adobe announced several updates to Lightroom today. Adobe Firefly, first announced in March 2023 as a beta for Photoshop users, is a generative AI tool for editing, altering and producing generative AI images. It’s now coming to all versions of Lightroom.

With ‘Generative Remove,’ users can highlight an area of an image they want to remove (think of it like the heal tool on steroids) and then let Adobe’s AI tools take their best stab and artificially create something that passes for real.

Original image with a yawning person over the subject’s shoulder.

Image credit: Adobe

Image after ‘generative remove’ is used to remove a person in the background and create an artificial street scene where they were.

If you’ve used generative fill on Photoshop or seen one of Google Pixel’s Magic Eraser commercials, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Adobe says ‘generative remove’ for Lightroom is built on its first imaging model from last year, not ‘model 3,’ which was announced more recently.

‘Lens Blur’ is another AI-driven tool coming to Lightroom. With this tool, Lightroom users can generate a depth map and apply artificial depth of field. Users can apply varying levels of depth and the tool is also capable of introducing bokeh that mimics out-of-camera photography. The idea is that users can take a portrait shot at F22 and make it look like F3.5.

Both Generative Remove and Lens Blur are non-destructive edits, and Adobe says files altered by these tools will be automatically labeled using Content Credential tools from C2PA and CAI.

Also announced, updates to Lightroom mobile’s interface and Lightroom Classic gains expanded tethering support for several Sony cameras.

Availability

Generative Remove is available immediately as an ‘early access’ feature in Lightroom versions for desktop, mobile, iPad, web and Lightroom Classic.

Lens Blur, which was previously in ‘early access,’ is now included as a standard feature in the latest versions of Lightroom across the aforementioned platforms.

Press Release:

Adobe Unveils Firefly-Powered Generative Remove in Lightroom for Fast and Easy AI-Editing Across Surfaces

SAN JOSE, May 21 2024 – Today, Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) unveiled Generative Remove in Adobe Lightroom, bringing the magic of Adobe Firefly directly into everyday photo editing workflows across Lightroom mobile, web and desktop surfaces. Generative Remove is Lightroom’s most powerful remove tool yet, giving everyone the power to remove unwanted objects from any photo non-destructively in a single click by intelligently matching the removed area with pixel perfect generations for high-quality, realistic and stunning results. From removing distractions in family photos, to empowering professionals with speedier retouching workflows and more fine-grain control, Generative Remove empowers exciting capabilities for all photographers. Generative Remove is available today as an early access feature across the Lightroom ecosystem for millions of users.

Today, Lightroom’s AI-powered Lens Blur tool is now generally available with all-new presets, empowering everyone to achieve aesthetic blur effects on any photo in a single click. Combined with Lightroom’s world class photo editing tools, these latest features speed up everyday workflows for pros and give new photo editing superpowers to hobbyists so everyone can bring to life amazing photos.

“Whether you’re a hobbyist or a pro photographer, everyone wants to be able to quickly and easily edit their photos on the go,” said Ashley Still, senior vice president and general manager, Creative Cloud at Adobe. “We’re excited to bring the magic of Firefly to Lightroom’s millions of users – so they can live in the moment knowing they have the most powerful tools to edit, manage and share anywhere they are.”

Photo Editing for Everyone

Accessing Generative Remove is as easy for Lightroom users as cropping a photo or adding a preset. Generative Remove is helpful for editing even the most complicated backgrounds and surroundings including removing stains from a patterned shirt, wrinkles of a tablecloth in food photography, unwanted reflections in water and more. From removing distractions in travel photos, to empowering even more seamless retouching capabilities for pros, Generative Remove empowers everyone with new creative possibilities and saves time to focus on what they do best – bringing their creative visions and work to life. Adobe is engaging closely with our community while Generative Remove is in early access to continue to get feedback from the photography community, advance the model and expand the capabilities of Generative AI in the Lightroom ecosystem.

Empowering Everyone to Edit with Speed and Ease

New tools available in Lightroom today empower users of all skill levels from hobbyists to pros to edit photos from anywhere and any device faster, easier and more intuitively than ever before:

Lens Blur, now generally available, seamlessly adds aesthetic blur effects to any part of a photograph in a single click and now includes all-new automatic presets;
Expanded tethering support for new cameras including the latest Sony digital cameras – such as the Alpha 7 IV and Alpha 7R V – provides access to photos in Lightroom Classic in real-time, delivering time saving on everyday editing workflows and enabling better collaboration across teams;
HDR Optimization, used already across tens of millions of images, enables anyone capturing photos to edit and export their photos with brighter highlights, deeper shadows and more vivid colors, as seen in real life;
Instant access to photo libraries in Lightroom mobile and desktop apps empowers faster editing than ever before;
Lightroom’s all-new mobile editing experience streamlines the mobile toolbar to prioritize the most popular features, while making it faster and more intuitive to edit.

Powered by Adobe Firefly

Firefly has driven an unprecedented community response and has been used to generate over 8 billion images worldwide across Adobe creative tools since its initial debut in March 2023. Generative Remove is powered by Firefly, which was made with creators, photographers and designers in mind. Firefly is trained on licensed content, such as Adobe Stock and is designed to generate content for commercial use that does not infringe on copyright and other intellectual property (IP) rights such as trademarks and logos. The deep integration of next-generation AI powered by Firefly across multiple of Adobe’s core tools uniquely enables new creative workflows that supercharge creativity with precise creative control.

Commitment to Responsible Innovation

Adobe is committed to developing AI in accordance with the company’s AI Ethics principles of accountability, responsibility and transparency. As AI becomes more prevalent in content creation, Adobe believes that it is important to provide consumers with transparency about its use in the creative process. A recent study from Adobe showed that 76% of U.S. consumers emphasized the importance of knowing if online content is generated using AI.

When Generative Remove becomes generally available, Content Credentials will be automatically attached to photos edited with the feature in Lightroom. With this launch, combined with C2PA-compliant cameras from Sony, Leica, Nikon, Canon and Fujifilm, Adobe is moving closer to enabling users to maintain a chain of trust by attaching Content Credentials to their content, ensuring authenticity from point of capture through editing to publication.

Like a “nutrition label” for digital content, Content Credentials are tamper-evident metadata that can provide important information about how digital content was created, modified and published. Credentials are built on the C2PA open standard and supported by the Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), which was founded in 2019 to increase trust in the digital ecosystem. Today, the CAI has grown into a global coalition of over 3,000 members across tech, policy, media companies, creative professionals, researchers and more, all working together to add transparency to digital content.

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