Lightroom SOLUTIONS for 3 Remove Object PROBLEMS!

It's never been easier to remove objects in Lightroom.

However, you may encounter three problems while removing objects, and I have an easy solution for each. Plus, stay until the end for a bonus tip.

Now, last year in Florida, I came across this family of burrowing owls.

Some of them were putting on a little show for me, and then the adults watched from a distance or stood on top of this little perch.

These little markers throughout the area indicated a nest in the area, so we humans would know that they were there and not to disturb them.

Still, it became a problem because they were in some of my photos, and I had to either get creative with my cropping or remove them in Photoshop.

We now have the same editing tools in Lightroom for removing objects, and we no longer need Photoshop.

You might be familiar with it already, but I want to explain how to use it, then reveal the problems you will encounter with some photos and how to overcome those problems.

The removal tool I’m referring to is called Generative AI, and it’s available via this icon.

If you click on that, it will open that panel, or you can press the letter “Q” to open it.

Now, if your Lightroom interface looks different and it looks like this, then your remove tool will be right here.

It’s the exact same tool, but the keyboard shortcut is different.

You can activate it by pressing the letter H or clicking the icon. The tool works exactly the same way in this version of Lightroom as it does in Lightroom Classic.

Now, removing this object is super-duper easy, but we want to make sure that we turn on generative AI. Then, all you have to do is paint over the object that you want to remove.

Once you do that, you’ll get this mask refinement to add or subtract to it. I like to include outside of that object, as I did here, to give it information on how or what to replace it.

It will analyze the overall image, but it will take into account the overlay area more so that it can match that area with the object that’s going to be replaced.

We’re going to click apply here, and then Lightroom will analyze the image and generate an AI replacement for that object. Boom, it’s gone. How awesome is that? I love it.

Now, there is a problem at the top. It still includes a little bit of that stick.

If we’re not happy with the result, we can go to variations, which will give us three different options or variations. We can navigate to each one to see if we get a better result.

Unfortunately, the other two are worse than the first one.

We can now click on refresh, which will reanalyze the image and try to come up with three better variations. Sometimes, it does, and sometimes, it doesn’t.

In this case, it doesn’t likely remove that little bit along the edge, which I find to be.

The biggest problem with this is when you have an object on the edge, it’s not always perfect.

You can go over that area again to target just that little bit rather than trying to replace everything at once.

And this usually fixes it within one or two extra tries. So, let’s see if it does.

It doesn’t look like it’s going to work.

What we need to do now is something more advanced or a couple of extra steps, but when I tried this the first time earlier, it removed it perfectly in one try.

But I want to navigate to another image here for another object along the edge that causes even more problems. Since I’ve already fixed it, I’m going to delete it.

And here’s that stick again, it’s just poking through the edge here. Now, how did I get rid of that?

If we press the letter “H” and let Lightroom Classic open, it will show the edits that I applied.

I have three different edits here based on these markers.

If you hover over it, it will show you where I applied that brush and where it’s copying from one portion to another.

If you hold down your command key, or, actually, I’m sorry, the alt or option key here, you’ll get the scissors tool.

You’re going to click and drag around that.

So, press the alt/option button, click and drag around the edits, and release (the mouse button) to delete them.

Now, if you’re not getting the desired result, it’s better to start over, and that’s why you may want to delete them.

In Lightroom, the keyboard shortcut for the remove tool is the letter “H.”

In this version, you have to select show overlay on hover.

When I hover over the image, you’ll see this little blue marker showing where that edit is applied and then the alt/option, which you can drag around to delete.

Everything will be done in Lightroom Classic because it’s all the same.

Here’s the problem. We have an item along the edge, and it’s trying to analyze it around that object.

And because we have an edge here with nothing on it, it doesn’t have any information for filling in that object along the edge.

I’m going to go ahead and use Generative AI here, apply it, and then I’m going to show you the solution for overcoming how to retouch an object along the edge.

I spent about an hour yesterday testing this, and this is probably the best result I’ve gotten with generative AI.

Again, the results are inconsistent from one image to the next or from one day to another.

Sometimes, you’re going to get better results than other times. Let’s see if there’s a different variation that’s even better, that one’s worse, and then that one’s even worse than the previous.

I can continue going through and refreshing until I find something, but that’s time-consuming.

Here’s a solution to the problem. Now, I already mentioned you can go over this little area again, but let’s say that doesn’t work.

Let’s try one of these other variations to make this more difficult.

Now, there’s another problem, which I’m not sure you can see now.

Let me press the letter “H” to hide this marker. But another problem is showing up right now, which is an issue with high ISO images.

So, I shot this at ISO 5,600 and will show you the problem if you don’t see it and the solution. But first, let’s get rid of this.

To do that, we’re going to switch tools.

If I show the tool icon here again, it shows that I’m using this mode, the remote mode. What I want to do is switch to the stamp tool.

Because this is selected, when I click on the stamp tool, it will automagically switch to that tool.

And then this is known as the clone tool.

It’s going to clone the pixels in this area over the area that I want to fix or the object that I want to remove.

Sometimes, it may place this somewhere else in the image, and all you have to do is click and drag on it to move it closer to the object that you want to remove so that those luminance values, colors, textures, and everything else are closer to that object that you want to remove right now.

It’s not looking pretty good.

We’re going to remove the feather from 100, move it down, and it will magically disappear.

I’m going to zoom in, and now you can see that the object has been removed, but it doesn’t always work.

Another problem arises when you have to do this multiple times because, let’s say, you have something more like this, okay?

So now you can apply the remove tool in this area.

Now I need to go back. I will undo that commander control plus the letter “Z” because I switchedmy mode tool by clicking on this, but my stamp tool is still selected.

I need to hit my escape key to deselect that tool. Then, I can use the remove tool to create a new generative AI for this area.

So I will apply it, and hopefully, it will remove it.

If not, that’s okay because I want to show you the problem that this creates with a high ISO and how to fix it. All right?

So, this little area right here is not better. It’s worse.

I will click the Refine button and subtract from this area because I don’t want to include it.

If you’re not getting the results you want, you may need to apply this a couple more times to eliminate it completely.

Alright, so it’s much better. I’m going to hit the delete key to delete that edit.

It’s much better with the clone tool with the feather down lower.

But let’s say that doesn’t work.

So I’m going back to generative AI and leaving this here for now because I want to show you that we can hit the escape key “H” to hide it.

You can see an outline here, which is the problem with generative AI on images with a high ISO.

It creates a pattern or texture that differs from the digital noise.

If you find that the remove tool removed the object perfectly but left this texture behind, here’s how to fix it.

One way is to enter your detail panel and ensure your Denoise is turned on.

It’s off right now, and you can see that it’s blurring and smoothing out the details in that texture area created by generative AI and digital noise.

But I can still see an outline around the area I tried to fix.

You can see that it selected this area over here. So I will bring this in and keep that feather down pretty low. Alright, so it’s not perfect.

There’s still a little outline where generative AI covered up and deleted the object.

Denoise is applying a model for the digital noise, right?

It does not apply the same results or give the same results for something other than digital noise, in this case, this texture.

You can try to use Denoise AI, but it creates the same problem.

I will turn off luminance and show you my preferred solution.

If you’re happy with that result, you’re good to go.

But I know some of you use this third alternative app as well.

For those of you who do, this is the best solution because it will not only get rid of the digital noise but also smooth out this extra texture that generative AI is creating. That app is Topaz Photo AI.

I’m going to go ahead and edit. Let’s see. Where is it? Topaz Photo AI. I’m going to create a TIFF file.

I know you may already use it, but you need to take an extra step to remove this texture.

We’re not just going to apply Denoise once.

We are going to apply it twice, plus we are going to target that area with a mask.

You can’t do this in any other Denoise application, especially Lightroom and Photoshop.

That is, applying more than one Denoise model. So you can see the area where we have Denoise being applied, and it’s beginning to remove that noise.

And there it is. I can still see an outline, but it’s slightly darker in that area.

So what I’m going to do now is add a nut.

So what I’m going to do now is add an extra enhancement to that area.

But I’m going to select the background and then use Extreme.

And what that’s going to do is it’s going to take all the noise, extra noise that is still there, digital artifacts, and that texture that was created, and it’s going to smooth it all out by blurring it.

Boom, there it is, nice and smooth. To learn more about Lightroom, watch this Lightroom quick tip playlist next.

Have an awesome day.