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;
HDROptimization, 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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Three’s a crowd
The Comedy Wildlife Awards has released ten of the best entries it’s received so far, with less than a month left, if you think you’ve shot something better.
Deena Sveinsson / Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards
The Leica D-Lux 8 is a gently updated version of the D-Lux 7, bringing the latest interface and styling cues to match the Q3 and reminding us how much we like a good enthusiast compact.
The Pentax 17 is the first Pentax film camera in two decades. It’s built around a half-frame film format and includes design cues inspired by previous Pentax models. Is the experience worth the price of admission? We tested it to find out.
Nikon has announced the Z6III, its third-generation mid-range full-frame mirrorless camera. A new 24MP sensor brings speed to every part of the camera, and all the key features have been upgraded.
The newest version of Panasonic’s Micro Four Thirds video-oriented flagship camera has arrived, and it includes features like internal ProRes RAW recording, 32-bit Float audio capture, phase-detect autofocus, and compatibility with Panasonic’s Real-Time LUT system and Lumix Lab app.
The Lumix S9 is Panasonic’s newest full-frame mirrorless camera. It allows users to create their own custom looks for out-of-camera colors and is the first full-frame Lumix camera aimed squarely at social media content creators.
What’s the best camera for around $2000? This price point gives you access to some of the most all-round capable cameras available. Excellent image quality, powerful autofocus and great looking video are the least you can expect. We’ve picked the models that really stand out.
What’s the best camera for travel? Good travel cameras should be small, versatile, and offer good image quality. In this buying guide we’ve rounded-up several great cameras for travel and recommended the best.
If you want a compact camera that produces great quality photos without the hassle of changing lenses, there are plenty of choices available for every budget. Read on to find out which portable enthusiast compacts are our favorites.
‘What’s the best mirrorless camera?’ We’re glad you asked.
Above $2500 cameras tend to become increasingly specialized, making it difficult to select a ‘best’ option. We case our eye over the options costing more than $2500 but less than $4000, to find the best all-rounder.
French camera maker Pixii has announced the Pixii Max, a 24MP full-frame rangefinder camera that accepts Leica M-mount lenses.
The Pixii Max (Model A3410) is the company’s fifth camera and the first to move from an APS-C sensor to full frame. Like the previous, 26MP A2572+ and A2572 models, the Max uses a fully 64-bit processing pipeline, allowing fine-precision manipulation of the sensor’s 14-bit output.
Also like its predecessors, the camera’s true rangefinder viewfinder has framelines projected into it (35mm in this instance), meaning they can correct for parallax as you focus to closer distances. The outer limits of the finder represent a 28mm angle of view. The camera’s core exposure settings are also projected into the viewfinder.
Photo: Pixii
It also has a mono option that takes into account the relative perceptual lightness of its sensor’s Red, Green and Blue filters, to create a monochrome DNG Raw file. This should give the sharpness benefit of not having to demosaic the results, but won’t gain the ∼1EV improvement at any given ISO that completely removing the filter array would bring.
The Pixii Max is available for pre-order from July 5th at a cost of €3999, without taxes (approx $4325 at current exchange rates) for the version with 32GB of internal memory or €4249 (∼$4595). As before, the company says there are options to upgrade previous models to the latest specifications. We’ve asked the company for more details of this upgrade path.
Press Release:
Pixii SAS announces Pixii Max, its first full-frame camera with a high-performance 24.5MP sensor, wide-angle optical viewfinder and a seamless upgrade option for existing Pixii owners. Available for pre-order on July 5, with a launch price of 3999 euros w/o taxes.
Pixii SAS, the rising French startup, unveils Pixii Max today, its first full-frame digital rangefinder camera.
Building on the success of its predecessors, Pixii Max marks a significant leap forward with exciting new features:
New 24.5MP full-frame sensor: The carefully selected, high-resolution 24.5MP full-frame sensor, builds on the strength of its pixel technology to deliver outstanding image quality, with exceptional dynamic range surpassing even its top-ranked predecessors. Photographers will appreciate the familiar feel of the 24×36 sensor paired with their rangefinder lenses of choice.
Wide-Angle Viewfinder: The new optical viewfinder complements the sensor capabilities, with high-index optical glass and fully multi-coated anti-reflective surfaces, to offer unmatched clarity and a wider field of view. The new design features comfortable frame lines for 35mm lenses, while offering an ultra-wide field of view, up to 28mm.
Upgrade option: Pixii Max isn’t just a new camera; it’s also another new upgrade path for existing Pixii camera owners. It packs all the power of Pixii Max into the existing compact form factor, with even a slight reduction in overall depth. The new upgrade confirms Pixii’s commitment to preserving the investment made by photographers in their cameras.
Additional Key Features of Pixii Max:
Modern 64-bit Platform, shared with the current Pixii cameras models, providing exceptional performances, connectivity and seamless over-the-air software upgrades.
Native Monochrome, Pixii’s exclusive feature to capture true B&W digital negatives with a bayer sensor. Pixii Max is also fully capable of producing native monochrome files.
Interactive Rangefinder Viewfinder, another Pixii exclusive feature providing real-time controls and indicators right inside the optical viewfinder, for a truly modern and immersive experience.
The Pixii Max joins the Pixii camera family, offering photographers a new option for rangefinder photography. Pixii remains committed to producing and developing the well-loved APS-C model, proposing two exceptional cameras to choose from for photographers with different needs.
Pricing and Availability
Pixii Max (Model A3410) will offer photographers a new entry point into the world of full-frame digital rangefinders, with special introductory prices:
Pixii Max (32GB): 3999 EUR w/o taxes.
Pixii Max (128GB): 4249 EUR w/o taxes.
Pixii Max will be available for pre-order on July 5.
Results published by Bill Claff and forum regular Horshack both point to the Nikon Z6 III having appreciably lower dynamic range than the previous generation of 24MP sensors.
Faster sensor readout is often associated with higher levels of read noise, and this appears to be the case with what Nikon is calling the “Partially Stacked” sensor in the Z6III. Bill Claff’s photons to photos site reports a maximum dynamic range of 10.4EV, using his own “photographic DR” metric. This compares to a figure of 11.3EV for the Z6 II.
It’s important to stress that dynamic range is not the same thing as image quality: two cameras can demonstrate the same dynamic range cut-off even while one exhibits much better tonal quality across much of the brightness range of its images. So it’s not safe to make assumptions about the Z6III’s overall image quality in relation to other cameras’ DR numbers.
However, after a long period in which most cameras showed extremely low levels of read noise, allowing the deep shadows of images to be brightened and incorporated into images, it’s definitely noteworthy that the Z6III will have noisier shadows than its predecessor and the Nikon Zf. The trade-off for this reduction in shadow performance is the high-speed shooting modes, the improved rolling shutter in both video and e-shutter stills, and any AF performance advantage shown over the Zf.
The Z6III’s sensor has a dual conversion gain design, and the higher gain step is sufficient to overcome the read noise difference seen at lower ISOs, bringing the Z6III back into line with the Z6 II, but it’s the peak dynamic range figures (typically for base ISO) that are most meaningful.
We have not yet received a testable camera so cannot corroborate the results, but the findings of lower dynamic range by experienced and knowledgeable users makes us feel confident enough to report them. We’ll be testing the Z6 III and showing how photographically meaningful these differences are or aren’t, as soon as we receive a camera.