Adobe adds easy AI eye generation to Lightroom Mobile

The way it works is relatively simple: if you open a photo that has someone with their eyes closed in it, there’ll be an option called “Open Eyes” in the Quick Actions menu. Tap it, and the app will use generative AI to composite in a new set of eyes for them that are, well, open. The company says that if you have other pictures of the person in your Lightroom library, it’ll use data from those to match their eye shape, color and size for an “even more accurate” result. The feature works on shots of individuals, as well as groups, and the company says it only targets “the area that needs adjustment,” without messing with the rest of the person’s face, letting you “save an otherwise great photo without losing what made the moment special.”

A before / after example created using the “Open Eyes” feature, provided by Adobe.

Of course, it’s not like this kind of thing was impossible to do before. Even well before the age of generative AI, Adobe Photoshop Elements had a similar feature, which worked by pulling an image of the person’s eyes from another picture you took. If you didn’t have one, or if the lighting didn’t match, or if the result looked odd because they were making a facial expression that would usually force someone’s eyes closed, you were out of luck.

You could also do this relatively easily in modern versions of Photoshop using the Generative Fill tool, though obviously that requires having a subscription to Photoshop and being willing to go through the few extra steps required. Adobe gives people using the free version of Lightroom mobile two uses of the Open Eyes feature before asking them to subscribe to an AI or Creative Cloud plan. Interestingly, when I tested the feature out, the UI implied it was using a third-party image generation model – Google’s Nano Banana – rather than Adobe’s own FireFly one.

I suspect many of our regular readers won’t be in love with the idea of this feature, as it’s the latest in a not-so-slow march of tech that makes us ask “so what really counts as a photo?” And indeed, it’s hard to imagine myself ever using this kind of feature; I’m not particularly interested in sharing moments that didn’t happen, and I think there’s something special about a laugh or a smile so intense you couldn’t possibly keep your eyes open during it. However, I suspect there will be many out there who will find this kind of feature useful, because they just need one more shot to round out a social post, or couldn’t get all the kids smiling with their eyes open at once. Phone makers have been playing around with similar features for a while, most of which typically rely more on combining multiple pictures than wholesale generation, but that step is starting to feel inevitable.

Adobe’s “Open Eyes” feature is now available in the Lightroom mobile app. Like the rest of the Quick Actions system, it doesn’t currently appear to be available on the desktop version of Lightroom.