Remove distracting people in a photo

Last updated on 11 July 2025

Learn how to remove distracting people in a photo with the AI-powered Distracting People Removal tool.

Turn any photo into a perfect picture with the AI-powered Distraction Removal tool that eliminates distracting people in a photo.

Try it in the app
Follow along with any project to learn how to remove people in a photo.

Select a photo that has unwanted people, and open it in the Develop mode.
Select Remove .
In the Distraction Removal panel, select People .

Note

Lightroom Classic will automatically detect distracting people in the photo and create a mask overlay (red by default) with individual pins over them.
To exclude someone from the removal, select the pin over them and then select Delete .
Keyboard shortcuts to delete a selection:
- Select the Option/Alt key + click on a pin to delete the selection.
- Delete multiple pins by drawing a bounding rectangle using the Option/Alt key.
A red overlay is created over all the distracting people. Select individual pins to remove them from the selection.
Select Remove.
Select the arrows to cycle through the variations generated by Lightroom Classic using Adobe Firefly. You can also select the Generate button to develop three new variations.

Tip

Select Edit options beside the variations to Delete Variation or Report Variation.

Alert

The Distraction Removal - People tool is currently not available on WinARM machines.

Copy-Paste People Removal edit settings

Once you have applied the desired edits to a photo in the People Removal tool, right-click on the image and select Settings > Copy settings.
In the Copy Settings menu, choose People under Remove.

Choose the desired settings you want to copy.
Select or de-select all the other edit settings, then select Copy.
Open the photo where you want to paste these edit settings, right-click, and navigate to Settings > Paste Settings.
You can also select multiple photos and apply the copied edit settings together.

Note

People Removal also supports Sync and Auto-sync workflows. You can also create a preset of your edit settings to apply the same settings to a batch of images quickly.