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Remove unwanted people from a photo

Last updated on Jun 17, 2025

Learn how to remove distracting people in a photo.

The People option under the AI-powered Distraction Removal helps you remove distracting people from a photo.

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

Remove distracting people from a photo

Open a photo with distracting people in the Detail view and select Remove.
In the Distraction Removal section, select People .

Note:

Lightroom will automatically detect all the distracting people in the photo and create a mask overlay (red by default) with individual pins over them.
To exclude any highlighted area from the removal, select the pin over them and then press the delete key.
Select Remove.
To regenerate a removed area, hover over the image and select the pin over the area that you want to regenerate, and then select Regenerate .

Choose Selected to completely delete the Remove settings and restore the original area.

Select the left and right arrows to view different variations.

Tip:

You can select multiple generated options from Variations. If unsatisfied with a generated variation, select Menu > Delete variation or Report variation.
Select Restore to switch back to the original photo or select View to view the before and after versions of the image.

Select Edit options once you have applied the desired edits to a photo in the Distracting People Removal tool.
Select Copy Edit Settings.
Open the photo where you want to paste these edit settings, navigate to the Edit options menu and select Paste Edit Settings.
You can also select multiple photos and apply the copied edit settings to all selected photos at once.

If you have a question to ask or an idea to share, come and participate in the Adobe Lightroom community. We'd love to hear from you!

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