Photo bombing is dead. Adobe is adding an artificial intelligence-powered Generative Remove feature to its program Lightroom photo editor that makes it dead easy to remove unwanted elements, such as that annoying man in the background. The new feature is in public beta testing, but will work across the Lightroom ecosystem whether you use the app on mobile, desktop, or web.
Lightroom's Generative Remove uses Adobe Firefly AI motor to smoothly replace unwanted elements. Simply paint over the area you want to remove and Lightroom sends that information to Adobe's Firefly servers, which then processes the data and sends it back. In demos WIRED saw, this process took no more than a few seconds, although performance depends on the speed of your Internet connection.
Unlike Adobe Photoshop Reference image feature, which launched less than a month ago and allows users to generate new images with Firefly, Lightroom's AI features are heavily focused on a photographer's workflow.
One of the more difficult things about editing images is removing distracting elements. Normally this would be done using tools like Lightroom's Content Aware Remove, which hides elements by matching surrounding areas. This works well in small situations where backgrounds are not too confusing for the software. For example, removing a telephone pole against a solid blue sky. But the larger the object to be removed and the more complex the background, the more difficult and time-consuming this becomes.
The Firefly-powered Genative Remove can do the same thing, but for much larger objects against any background. Adobe has reduced what would once have taken hours and significant technical knowledge to a mouse swipe and a few seconds of processing time. Everyone is a Lightroom wizard now. Moreover, unlike other retouching tools, which are the best match, Genative Remove generates three different versions and allows you to choose the one that looks the best.
As impressive and useful as Genative Remove is, it may sound a little familiar, especially to anyone who uses Google Photos. These new features don't offer much that Google's Magic eraser couldn't do it already. It also doesn't enable anything like Google's Magic editorwhich allows you to change the lighting of a scene or cut and paste subjects into the scene.
Adobe's Genative Remove reflects the company's previous use of AI, such as last year's AI-powered noise removal tool, which built on existing noise removal tools, making them better rather than breaking significant new ground enter. I suspect this is what working photographers actually want: better tools, rather than flashy new features. Adobe seems content to leave the more dramatic AI-powered tools, such as rearranging a scene afterwards, to others.