What's New In Lightroom? Exploring Adobe's AI Photo Editing Tools

Adobe has had a busy year rolling out new AI updates across the entire Creative Cloud suite as well as integrated tools like Adobe Firefly. And Lightroom – the photo editing app trusted by photographers around the world – has also had its fair share of updates following Adobe MAX back in October 2025.

Whether you’re a professional photographer using Lightroom on a daily basis or a social media content creator looking to elevate your designs and streamline your output, Adobe’s most recent app updates will be sure to inspire and get you experimenting with all the shots across your hard drive. And for students looking to learn the ropes and start using these AI features from the ground floor, there’s never been a better time to take full advantage of the student discount for Adobe Lightroom.

Lightroom’s Top New AI Photo Editing Features

Here are the newest AI photo editing tools to join Lightroom’s industry leading catalogue of industry-ready features.

AI People & Object Removal

Powered by Adobe Firefly integration, Lightroom now enables users to remove unwanted objects and people from their photos with peak precision. This AI editing tool allows users to specifically target and remove unwanted elements from the background of their images, using magic fill techniques to seamlessly remove and replace with a continuation of the image backdrop and background.

With the AI people and object removal tool, Lightroom can remove trees, crowds, and other unwanted elements from your shots, and make it seem as if they were never there to begin it.

Dust Removal

Lightroom touchup tools have been industry-leading for quite some time, but with recent AI updates, the output and performance of touchup tools have grown in leaps and bounds. The newly updated AI-powered dust removal tool can now instantly detect and remove sensor dust spots in one click.

You can find Lightroom’s new and improved AI-powered Dust Removal tool under the Remove tool > Distraction > Removal > Dust. Users have also got the option to batch-apply edit settings in the Dust Removal tool if they’re looking to apply the same edits across multiple images. Batch-apply allowances are proving to be a great feature for professional photographers like wedding photographers, who need to ensure that their photo albums maintain a consistent editing style for their clients.

AI Masking

With Lightroom’s new automating AI masking features, the platform can now detect dynamic elements in your image for targeted editing jobs. You can use AI masking for a wide array of elements, from whole mountains in the background of landscape shots, to individual foliage in the foreground of macro shots.

AI masking is also proving to be effective for retouching individual people within a wider shot. If you’re working with photographs with large segments of crowd in the background, Lightroom’s AI masking tool can isolate particular faces within the crowd rather than just treating the entire throng as its own element. Talk about precision editing!

Lens Blur

For photographers who love to use bokeh and blur effects across Photoshop and Lightroom, you’ll be happy to hear that Lightroom’s new AI-powered Lens Blur tools now use an easy one-tap preset to isolate subjects faster and more accurately. There is now also more customisation surrounding blur strength and depth mapping across the app’s six bokeh styles.

By providing greater control over the bokeh and blur effects, Lightroom ultimately ensures your final edits are more realistic, facilitating a depth-of-field effect for images that rival the same organic processing methods used by high-end camera lenses.

AI Assisted Culling

Working with dozens of duplicate shots? With Lightroom’s new AI-powered Assisted Culling feature, users can now make quick work of automatically analysing, organising, and identifying the best images during or even after imports.

AI Assisted Culling is algorithmic in nature, specifically developed to identify sharp images, detect closed or blurry eyes, and poor exposure. In evaluating all of these flaws across duplicate shots, Lightroom can then definitely recommend the strongest shot of the lot for users to process further.

Lightroom Platform & Workflow Improvements

Alongside these new AI features, Adobe also released a tailored selection of platform and workflow updates to complement Lightroom’s new Firefly-enabled tools. Here are the most high-value platform and workflow improvements that users can now enjoy as they experiment with and integrate Lightroom’s new AI features into their daily editing to-do lists.

AI Edit Status Button

If you’re working on a photo that has AI-powered editing settings enabled across any of the AI editing features we’ve highlighted above, Lightroom will now toggle an AI Edit Status button to help you better keep track of your AI edits.

For example, let’s say you used a Distraction Removal tool to remove reflections on the surface of a body of water. The AI Edit Status platform feature will then record that AI setting under ‘Distraction Removal: Reflections’, so you can see what AI edit feature has been enabled and for which element/s in your photo.

The AI Edit Status button is also useful for alerting users if there are any AI settings that need to be updated to ensure proper image rendering. In these instances, the AI Edit Status button will show a yellow highlight alert until the necessary action has been taken.

Point Color Tool Updates

The Point Color variance slider has been a fan favourite of Lightroom by allowing for targeted colour saturation edits. As of September 2025, the Point Color tool has now been included not only across Lightroom Classic and Desktop, but also Lightroom’s web-based app and Adobe Camera Raw as well.

WIth the newly updated Point Color tool, users can now enjoy smoother finetuning and colour adjustments by controlling the similarity of adjacent colours as well (i.e. colours that neighbour your selected colour on the colour wheel). With the variance slider, pulling the slider to the left blends nearby colours towards the colour you’ve selected, whereas pulling the slider to the right creates further distinction between those colours and your selected colour.

In short, the Point Color tool’s operational updates now make it even easier to create colour saturation effects that feel more natural and cohesive.

Interactive Editing for Improved Efficiency

Speaking of easier edits, Lightroom’s UI itself has gotten a huge update when it comes to performance enhancements. Adobe has rolled out significant speed improvements across all the tools we’ve showcased above, as well as Lightroom’s existing suite of traditional photo editing tools.

This means that Lightroom users can expect the platform to facilitate smoother interactive edits across the board, which equals less processing time and more editing time.

Streamlined Mobile & Web App Updates

Finally, improvements to Lightroom’s web and mobile app interfaces now makes it easier for photographers to access the platform and all its newly integrated AI tools. To integrate the new AI tools more effectively, Lightroom’s toolbar across the mobile and web app has been streamlined to provide easier access to the platform’s expanded catalogue of AI photo editing tools, as well as to make file sharing even simpler.

Explore the New & Improved AI-Ready Lightroom

Ready to start experimenting with Lightroom’s new AI photo editing tools? Then grab your Lightroom offer or wider Creative Cloud subscription today to see how you can integrate these industry-leading features into your own workflow as a hobby or professional photographer.

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