Today’s Question: I have a photo where the People option for Distraction Removal in Lightroom Classic is not finding the people in the image and therefore can’t remove them. Is there a way to tell Lightroom Classic where the people are so they can be removed automatically?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Sort of. You can’t provide assistance to the Distraction Removal feature, but you can still remove the people by painting with the Remove tool, perhaps with the inclusion of generative AI. The same feature is available in Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic, and Lightroom.
More Detail: The options found under the Distraction Removal heading for Lightroom Classic, Camera Raw, and Lightroom are completely automatic. If the target subject (such as people with the People option) aren’t identified for a given image, then the feature simply won’t work with that image. Note that this feature is specifically looking for people that are distracting in the frame, so a person that appears as a key subject won’t be detected either.
However, you can get similar results by using the Remove tool, generally in conjunction with the generative AI feature for the best results.
In Lightroom Classic, for example, after choosing the Remove tool from the toolbar below the histogram on the right panel, make sure the Remove option (the first button) is selected for Mode. To get results consistent with what you can normally expect for the Distraction Removal feature turn on the “Use generative AI” checkbox. You can then paint over the distracting people in the photo, refine the mask you’ve painted as needed, and click the Remove button to apply the distraction removal.
While this manual approach isn’t as fast or convenient as the automatic option under Distraction Removal, it will generally provide you with similar (and generally very good) results for removing people from an image.
