Lightroom AI Explained: No Hype—Just Powerful Editing Tools

If there’s one topic guaranteed to spark strong opinions among photographers, it’s AI. Some love it, some dislike it, and many are unsure where they stand. I’m not here to convince you one way or another. My only goal is to help you understand the tools available in Lightroom so you can make informed choices about your editing workflow.

A lot of the confusion comes from the word AI itself. We tend to associate it exclusively with generative AI—tools that create new pixels. Lightroom does have one generative tool, but the vast majority of its AI features are non-generative. They don’t add anything new to your photo; instead, they analyze what’s already there and help you work faster and more accurately.

Below are my six favorite AI-powered tools in Lightroom and why each one has earned a place in my workflow.

1. AI Denoise — The First Tool I Apply to Most Photos

Noise is inevitable when shooting at higher ISOs, and because I shoot a lot of wildlife, I routinely find myself at ISO 2500 or higher to maintain fast shutter speeds. That’s where AI Denoise comes in.

Denoise analyzes your raw file, isolates the noise pattern, and suppresses it without smearing away fine detail. You select Detail > Denoise, adjust the strength slider, and Lightroom gives you a real-time preview. What impresses me most is how well it preserves texture—feathers, fur, water droplets, and the catchlight in an animal’s eye all stay crisp.

This tool isn’t generative. It’s simply estimating and removing noise from the data already in your file. And yes, you can absolutely batch-apply it to multiple images.

2. Generative Remove — Removing Distractions With Generative Help

Generative Remove is Lightroom’s generative AI tool, and it’s designed to replace the older content-aware healing method. The difference is immediately obvious.

With content-aware removal, seams or repeated textures often give the edit away. With GenRemove, Lightroom sends your image to Firefly, generates three variations, and lets you choose the cleanest result. If none look right, you can generate three more.

For simple distraction cleanup—like removing a leaf that’s drawing my eye away from a bird—GenRemove can save a lot of time. If you prefer not to use generative tools, that’s completely fine; stick to the traditional heal or clone brushes. But for everyday, non-contest images, GenRemove offers natural-looking results with very little effort.

There’s also Distracting People Removal, which works similarly but automatically identifies people in your shot instead of relying on manual brush strokes.

3. Adaptive Masks — Intelligent Selections That Speed Up Editing

Adaptive Masks might be the feature I rely on most after Denoise. They use AI to detect important parts of the photo—sky, subject, background, vegetation, architecture, snow—and create targeted masks instantly.

In the past, you’d need a brush or gradient and a lot of patience to isolate these areas. Now, Lightroom does the selection work for you, and you decide how to edit it.

For landscape photographers, the Adaptive Landscape mask is especially powerful. It can identify multiple distinct elements in a scene and generate a separate mask for each. Being able to brighten snow, warm trees, and add contrast to architecture—without touching anything else—dramatically speeds up the process.

One of my favorite examples is the Adaptive Subject mask. Lightroom not only selected a bird perfectly, but also its reflection in the water—something even experienced editors might overlook.

4. Auto Dust Removal — A Long-Needed Timesaver

Sensor dust and lens dust happen to everyone. On a recent trip, I swapped lenses constantly and ended up with dust spots scattered across my frames.

Instead of manually hunting for each one, the dust removal tool now detects spots automatically. When you enable Remove > Distraction Removal > Dust, Lightroom marks everything it finds and heals the area using the traditional content-aware method.

It doesn’t catch every single spot, which is why the Visualize Spots checkbox is still helpful. But starting with most of the cleanup already done is a huge improvement.

5. Auto Stacking by Visual Similarity (Assisted Culling)

This is one of the newest AI tools and one I was excited to see. If you’ve ever shot wildlife, sports, or any fast action, you know the feeling of coming home with dozens—or hundreds—of nearly identical frames.

Auto Stacking groups similar shots into stacks based on visual similarity. You control how strict Lightroom should be: push the slider left for more precise grouping or right for looser grouping. Once the stacks are created, Lightroom even chooses what it believes is the strongest image (which you can override).

This tool only works with Cloud Library images for now, but it’s available in both Lightroom Desktop and Classic.

6. Lens Blur — Depth-Aware Blur for Creative Control

Lens Blur uses AI to create a depth map of your image, which allows Lightroom to blur the background (or foreground) based on estimated distance. Unlike generative tools, it doesn’t invent new objects—it simply interprets depth and applies blur accordingly.

You can:

• Control which areas remain in focus using the Focus Range slider

• Adjust the shape and style of the bokeh

• Lower the strength for a more natural look

Used sparingly, it’s a great way to enhance subject separation when your original shot didn’t quite nail the depth of field.

Wrapping it up

My goal with this walkthrough is to clear up some misconceptions about Lightroom’s AI features. Most of them aren’t generative at all—they’re simply helping you select faster, clean up faster, and organize faster so you can focus on the creative part of editing.

If you’re skeptical about AI tools, consider that you may already be using several without realizing it. As Lightroom continues to evolve, I encourage you to stay curious and explore the tools that genuinely improve your workflow.

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