Erase Tools

[Colin Grant]

Lightroom Version Number

9.3

Operating System

1. macOS 26 Tahoe

Have been away from LrC for a while and having come back to test the latest version I have found the erase tools to be somewhat hit and miss. The offerings from the competition is superior in my opinion. The results I have achieved are bad enough for me to let my subscription lapse and to go permanently with ON1 or DxO Photo Lab. Am I missing something?

Thank you

 

[Colin Grant]

Have been away from LrC for a while and having come back to test the latest version I have found the erase tools to be somewhat hit and miss. The offerings from the competition is superior in my opinion. The results I have achieved are bad enough for me to let my subscription lapse and to go permanently with ON1 or DxO Photo Lab. Am I missing something?

Thank you

What I am seeing is a faint residual off the item I have deleted. I wonder if it has anything to do with deleting on an area that is masked. Oh and I am using LrC 15.3

 

[clee01l]

What I am seeing is a faint residual off the item I have deleted. I wonder if it has anything to do with deleting on an area that is masked. Oh and I am using LrC 15.3

Masking may need to be reapplied along with other AI tasks Look for the yellow highlighted icon in the tool menu

It might help to take a look at your Remove Settings panel screen shot. You need to make sure you are using the Remove tool, not the heal or clone tool and detecting objects is checked.

I find the Classic Remove tool to be easier to work and more adjustable than in Photoshop or Topaz. It also works the same in the cloudy version Lightroom Desktop v9.3

 

[Colin Grant]

The yellow icon is visible. I shift /click to update everything but it comes back. Deleted items still showing up faintly. Definitely using remove tool and detect objects is checked.

 

[clee01l]

It might help FOR ME to take a look at your Remove Settings panel screen shot.

 

[Colin Grant]

I tried it without any mask and it was ok. As soon as I applied the mask the objects became visible again, albeit faintly.

 

[clee01l]

I tried it without any mask and it was ok. As soon as I applied the mask the objects became visible again, albeit faintly.

Check the box labeled Generative AI. I think you will get a better result. Also apply the mask before the remove to see if that makes a difference. (I don't think it matters as Adobe applies the AI tools in its predetermined order) Every time the AI Edit Status icon turns yellow, you need to update the AI tolls by clicking on the AI Edit Status icon/

 

[Califdan]

Leaving 'ghosts' of removed items is a result of the order of adding masks and doing removes. If, for example, you create a mask of the sky and lowered the exposure to make the sky look bluer. Then you removed a bird from the sky. The pixels where the bird had been are now sky BUT those pixels were not part of the sky mask as they were bird at the time the mask was created. As such those pixels did do not get the exposure change and appear as a ghost of the bird. If you had done the remove bird first, then created the sky mask this would not happen.

But, when it does happen, if the mask happens to be an AI generated mask (such as "Select Sky") then the yellow "recompute AI" icon will re-determine what is and isn't sky and will include the area where the bird had been and then it will get the exposure adjustment. If it wasn't an AI mask then you need to manually add the bird area to the sky mask.

Here's an article from December 2022 that I wrote which explains this
https://www.danhartfordphoto.com/blog/2022/12/lr017-ai-masks-used-with-healing-tools

 

[Colin Grant]

I have tried it with the mask in place first and with checking Generative. Did not make a great deal of difference. Adobe seem to have got this wrong somewhere so I will just continue with DxO. Thanks for your help Clee. Califdan, recomputing is only partly successful - parts of the deleted objects reappear.

 

[John R Ellis]

recomputing is only partly successful - parts of the deleted objects reappear.

Does the AI Edit Status button turn yellow again when you leave and come back to photos for which you've done Update AI Edit Status?

If so, you're tripping over a rare problem that has been reported on the Adobe forums, where the .lrcat-data catalog file storing the results of AI commands gets corrupted or LR is unable to update for some reason. At that point, the AI Edit Status button always turns yellow soon after doing an Update.

There is a help article that describes several conditions to check and best practices to avoid things that can corrupt the .lrcat-data file:
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/ai-edits-storage-error.html

You can also delete the .lrcat-data file entirely, which may be corrupted. Try these steps for rebuilding the .lrcat-data file without losing your edits; these steps have helped many but not all:

1. Do the menu command Help > System Info. If you're not on the latest version (currently 15.3), do Help > Updates.

2. Post the entire contents of Help > System Info here, to help narrow down possible causes.

3. In LR, do Catalog Settings > General > Show. That will open Windows File Explorer / Mac Finder on the current catalog folder.

4. Exit LR.

5. Move the file <catalog>.lrcat-data to the Desktop.

6. Start LR.

7. In Library Grid view (not Loupe view), select all photos and do Photo > Develop Settings > Update AI Settings. That will recompute all the AI settings, which could take a while.

Important to note: Recomputing AI settings for Generatived AI Remove will generate new variations for removes, which you may need to then adjust to your satisfaction.

 

[Califdan]

I have tried it with the mask in place first and with checking Generative. Did not make a great deal of difference. Adobe seem to have got this wrong somewhere so I will just continue with DxO

Hundreds of thousands of LrC users love how masking works and once they uderstand the tool the have no problem with it and use it intensively. We get very few complaints about this in this and other LrC forums and most that we do get boil down to a lack of understanding how the tools work and once that is resolved the user is generally very happy with the tools.

However, if you prefer the approach of other products and the overal capabilities of those other products compared to the capabilities of LrC, then indeed one of those other tools may be a better fit for you. So, wishing you the best.

 

[Colin Grant]

Leaving 'ghosts' of removed items is a result of the order of adding masks and doing removes. If, for example, you create a mask of the sky and lowered the exposure to make the sky look bluer. Then you removed a bird from the sky. The pixels where the bird had been are now sky BUT those pixels were not part of the sky mask as they were bird at the time the mask was created. As such those pixels did do not get the exposure change and appear as a ghost of the bird. If you had done the remove bird first, then created the sky mask this would not happen.

But, when it does happen, if the mask happens to be an AI generated mask (such as "Select Sky") then the yellow "recompute AI" icon will re-determine what is and isn't sky and will include the area where the bird had been and then it will get the exposure adjustment. If it wasn't an AI mask then you need to manually add the bird area to the sky mask.

Here's an article from December 2022 that I wrote which explains this
https://www.danhartfordphoto.com/blog/2022/12/lr017-ai-masks-used-with-healing-tools

Does the AI Edit Status button turn yellow again when you leave and come back to photos for which you've done Update AI Edit Status?

If so, you're tripping over a rare problem that has been reported on the Adobe forums, where the .lrcat-data catalog file storing the results of AI commands gets corrupted or LR is unable to update for some reason. At that point, the AI Edit Status button always turns yellow soon after doing an Update.

There is a help article that describes several conditions to check and best practices to avoid things that can corrupt the .lrcat-data file:
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/ai-edits-storage-error.html

You can also delete the .lrcat-data file entirely, which may be corrupted. Try these steps for rebuilding the .lrcat-data file without losing your edits; these steps have helped many but not all:

1. Do the menu command Help > System Info. If you're not on the latest version (currently 15.3), do Help > Updates.

2. Post the entire contents of Help > System Info here, to help narrow down possible causes.

3. In LR, do Catalog Settings > General > Show. That will open Windows File Explorer / Mac Finder on the current catalog folder.

4. Exit LR.

5. Move the file <catalog>.lrcat-data to the Desktop.

6. Start LR.

7. In Library Grid view (not Loupe view), select all photos and do Photo > Develop Settings > Update AI Settings. That will recompute all the AI settings, which could take a while.

Important to note: Recomputing AI settings for Generatived AI Remove will generate new variations for removes, which you may need to then adjust to your satisfaction.

Does the AI Edit Status button turn yellow again when you leave and come back to photos for which you've done Update AI Edit Status?

If so, you're tripping over a rare problem that has been reported on the Adobe forums, where the .lrcat-data catalog file storing the results of AI commands gets corrupted or LR is unable to update for some reason. At that point, the AI Edit Status button always turns yellow soon after doing an Update.

There is a help article that describes several conditions to check and best practices to avoid things that can corrupt the .lrcat-data file:
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/ai-edits-storage-error.html

You can also delete the .lrcat-data file entirely, which may be corrupted. Try these steps for rebuilding the .lrcat-data file without losing your edits; these steps have helped many but not all:

1. Do the menu command Help > System Info. If you're not on the latest version (currently 15.3), do Help > Updates.

2. Post the entire contents of Help > System Info here, to help narrow down possible causes.

3. In LR, do Catalog Settings > General > Show. That will open Windows File Explorer / Mac Finder on the current catalog folder.

4. Exit LR.

5. Move the file <catalog>.lrcat-data to the Desktop.

6. Start LR.

7. In Library Grid view (not Loupe view), select all photos and do Photo > Develop Settings > Update AI Settings. That will recompute all the AI settings, which could take a while.

Important to note: Recomputing AI settings for Generatived AI Remove will generate new variations for removes, which you may need to then adjust to your satisfaction.

Hundreds of thousands of LrC users love how masking works and once they uderstand the tool the have no problem with it and use it intensively. We get very few complaints about this in this and other LrC forums and most that we do get boil down to a lack of understanding how the tools work and once that is resolved the user is generally very happy with the tools.

However, if you prefer the approach of other products and the overal capabilities of those other products compared to the capabilities of LrC, then indeed one of those other tools may be a better fit for you. So, wishing you the best.

Irrelevant if there truly is an issue and that certainly seems to be the case according to the post above. This has nothing to do with my lack off understanding!!

 

[Colin Grant]

Does the AI Edit Status button turn yellow again when you leave and come back to photos for which you've done Update AI Edit Status?

If so, you're tripping over a rare problem that has been reported on the Adobe forums, where the .lrcat-data catalog file storing the results of AI commands gets corrupted or LR is unable to update for some reason. At that point, the AI Edit Status button always turns yellow soon after doing an Update.

There is a help article that describes several conditions to check and best practices to avoid things that can corrupt the .lrcat-data file:
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/ai-edits-storage-error.html

You can also delete the .lrcat-data file entirely, which may be corrupted. Try these steps for rebuilding the .lrcat-data file without losing your edits; these steps have helped many but not all:

1. Do the menu command Help > System Info. If you're not on the latest version (currently 15.3), do Help > Updates.

2. Post the entire contents of Help > System Info here, to help narrow down possible causes.

3. In LR, do Catalog Settings > General > Show. That will open Windows File Explorer / Mac Finder on the current catalog folder.

4. Exit LR.

5. Move the file <catalog>.lrcat-data to the Desktop.

6. Start LR.

7. In Library Grid view (not Loupe view), select all photos and do Photo > Develop Settings > Update AI Settings. That will recompute all the AI settings, which could take a while.

Important to note: Recomputing AI settings for Generatived AI Remove will generate new variations for removes, which you may need to then adjust to your satisfaction.

There has been instances where the AI Status button has gone back to yellow so it looks as though you have hit the proverbial nail on the head. Nothing to do with not understanding the tools then ... as suggested by one other. I'll follow through on that tomorrow. Thank you.

In the meantime here is the System Info.

 

[Califdan]

I have tried it with the mask in place first and with checking Generative. Did not make a great deal of difference.

to prevent the ghost problem you need to do the Remove first, then create the mask so that the mask respects the removal.

 

[Colin Grant]

The problem now appears to have resolved itself. The only material change I have made is to follow the steps provided by @John R Ellis. That said there has been lots of great info provided in this thread and for that I thank you all. My understanding of the tool has increased significantly.