Adobe Lightroom gets a 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 alike, even from a phone. These include an in-development object removal feature that’s rolling out in beta and new AI lens-blurring effects that are now generally available to all Lightroom users.

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

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

The live demonstration Adobe gave me over a video call was one of the most impressive I’ve seen from Adobe’s Firefly-powered products. The tool removed every example object in its entirety without leaving any strange artifacts behind, and the backgrounds generated to replace them — while not being an accurate depiction of what’s behind the object — looked natural enough to be convincing. The process of removing objects from photographs by professionals used to require some fairly laborious masking and editing workflows, so not only does this make a boring task easier but it’s also less daunting for new users.

The Generative Remove feature is free to use while in beta, after which it’ll likely adopt the “Generative Credit” system used by other Firefly-powered tools, with credit packs currently starting at $4.99. When the feature is generally available, it’ll also support Content Credentials, which applies a metadata label to images edited using Adobe’s generative AI tools.

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