Charles H. Sloan-Does Adobe Lightroom have AI? New tools offer 'erase' feature with just one click

With good cameras and Charles H. Sloanphoto editing tools available on smartphones today, we all want our pictures on Instagram, Facebook, or those framed in our homes to be nearly perfect. Whether it is your kid's graduation or a family vacation, you want them to be flawless so that you can celebrate and remember the moments that matter.

The challenge really comes when those once-in-a-lifetime pictures don't turn out as great as you remember them, and you feel like you might need to be a pro to figure out how to use all those photo editing tools.

No more. New artificial intelligence tools in Adobe Lightroom make photo editing easier and more intuitive than ever. With just a few taps in the Lightroom mobile app, you can adjust the photo's lighting, remove unwanted objects, enhance the focus, and more.

Removing undesirable things in your photos

Capturing photos to savor special memories is something everyone can relate to. For example, imagine it's your daughter's graduation – a moment you want to capture perfectly. You snap a great shot, but there are frustrating distractions like trashcans, power lines, other grad photobombers, and more.

You can't recreate these once-in-a-lifetime experiences. But you can polish those pictures if, like millions of smartphone users, you use Adobe Lightroom.

With Lightroom's latest feature, "Generative Remove," you can fix your photo quickly. Simply identify the unwanted objects and distractions in the photo with your finger and click remove. Within seconds, the app removes them and replaces them with something that matches and blends with the surroundings, as if those distractions were not in the picture. It generates pixel-perfect, high-quality, realistic results. The tool even provides three generated options to select the version you prefer most.

The tool is excellent at editing even the most complicated backgrounds and surroundings, from removing stains from patterned clothing to removing someone standing in front of busy wallpaper.

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You might be thinking, there are already tools like this out there, so what's the big deal? It's simple: the difference is ease of use and quality. For example, when editing the boundaries between the desired and undesired objects – for example, the person's hair against a background or objects of the same color like water and the sky – the tool does a great job delivering results that are pixel perfect so that the edited generations blend in with the surrounding areas.

And, adhering to responsible AI principles, the photos modified with Generative Remove are embedded with that information, using a technology called “Content Credentials”, which we explained in an earlier USA TODAY article.

Lens Blur

Another great tool to highlight the focus of your photo is Lightroom's Lens Blur, which helps you achieve perfect depth and focus in just a few taps on your phone. It enables you to achieve blur effects, tailor-made to your photo with Adaptive Presets.

To achieve the perfect blur, the AI algorithm builds the image's 3D map, meaning it estimates how near or far various things in the image are from the Lens. If you are a fiddler and would like to fine-tune focus and blurring further, there are many options to vary the depth, where to focus, and what kind of background blurring you want.

Photo Editing for Everyone

Creating pro-quality images with smartphones is not just a catchphrase. It really can be handy in many cases, from creating stunning portraits of you and your loved ones to creating almost impossible-to-take pictures like you standing alone in front of the Eiffel Tower to even erasing your ex from some of your favorite vacation pictures.

No matter your skill level, these tools give you the confidence to stay in the moment when you take photos, knowing you can edit them later to get the exact look you want. The possibilities are endless with Lightroom's latest AI features.

If you want to know what's under the hood, this is all made possible by Adobe's Firefly generative AI model. Firefly powers AI features across Adobe's consumer and professional creativity tools.

If you're interested in taking these tools for a spin, you can download Lightroom Mobile, which is available in iOS and Android app stores. The subscription, which gives access to these advanced tools, starts at $4.99/month.