Help › AI Edit Photos & Smart Develop Recipes in Lightroom

Help: AI Edit Photos (beta)

Beta feature. AI Edit generates generally good results but can occasionally produce edits that are too aggressive or miss the mark on specific scenes. Always use Review each proposed edit when running on photos you haven’t tested this feature on before, and be ready to skip or undo individual edits. Feedback and bug reports via GitHub Issues are very welcome.

The AI Edit Photos workflow generates a structured Lightroom develop recipe for each photo and can apply it directly — without leaving Lightroom Classic.

How to start

Library → Plug-in Extras → AI Edit Photos...


What it generates

For each photo the AI produces a develop recipe that may include:

  • Global adjustments — exposure, white balance, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, contrast, clarity, vibrance, saturation, HSL color shifts, tone curve, sharpening, noise reduction.
  • Local masks — subject, sky, or background masks with separate adjustments. Masks are only added when materially beneficial.

The recipe is applied via the Lightroom SDK. No raw pixel editing happens outside Lightroom; all results are reversible via Lightroom’s Edit History.


Dialog options

Scope

  • Selected photos only — processes only the photos you have selected in the Library grid.
  • Current view — all photos in the currently visible folder or collection.

AI Model

Choose which LLM to use. The list is loaded from the backend at runtime and only shows providers that are configured and reachable. See Help: Choosing AI Model.

Overall look

Selects the editing style preset injected into the AI prompt:

PresetDescription
General - Natural ProfessionalBalanced contrast, realistic color, clean detail. Default.
General - Moody DramaticDeeper shadows, restrained saturation, cinematic tonal separation.
Landscape - CinematicControlled dynamic range, subtle color contrast, tasteful depth.
Landscape - Vibrant NaturalClear tonal separation, protected highlights, controlled saturation.
Portrait - Skin SafeGentle contrast, natural texture, flattering highlights.
Portrait - EditorialClean skin tones, polished midtone contrast, soft highlight roll-off.
Wedding - Soft AiryBright mids, warm-neutral white balance, gentle contrast.
Wedding - Rich FilmicSubtle warm skin tones, gentle black-point lift, cinematic color depth.
Real Estate - Bright NeutralBright neutral interiors, straight tonal balance, minimal stylization.
Commercial - Clean ProductNeutral white balance, crisp detail, true-to-product colors.
Street - Punchy DocumentaryDecisive contrast, neutral color fidelity, clear subject separation.
CustomWrite your own style instruction in the text field.

Style strength

Controls how aggressively the preset style is applied, from subtle correction to full stylized look. Range: 0–100%. Default: 50%.

Composition / crop

Whether the AI may suggest a crop:

  • No crop — never adjusts framing.
  • Subtle crop — only if clearly beneficial for composition.
  • Aggressive crop — freely crops to improve composition.

Default: Subtle crop.

Review each proposed edit before applying it

When enabled, a review dialog opens for each photo before the edit is applied. You see:

  • A before/after comparison.
  • The proposed develop values.
  • Options to Apply, Skip, or provide a Per-photo instruction override (free text to tell the AI to adjust something specific for this photo).

Recommended for first use. Disable only after you’ve validated the results for your shooting style.

Per-photo instruction override (in review dialog)

A free-text field where you can give the AI a specific instruction for the current photo — for example “Make the sky more dramatic” or “Reduce noise in shadows”. This re-runs generation for this single photo with the override applied.


Training the AI on your style

If you want AI Edit to match your personal editing style, use Save Edits as AI Training Examples to feed your existing edits back to the AI as few-shot examples. See Help: Train from Edits.


Tips for best results

  • Start with Review each proposed edit enabled — review the first batch before applying to hundreds of photos.
  • Choose a preset that matches your genre (portrait, landscape, wedding, etc.) rather than using Custom initially.
  • Style strength 40–60% is a good starting range. Higher values push the style harder; lower values stay close to a neutral technical correction.
  • For portraits, enable face detection during indexing — the AI uses detected faces to make better masking decisions.
  • If results are inconsistent, try a higher-quality model (e.g. gemini-2.5-pro or gpt-5.4-pro).
  • Use Save Edits as AI Training Examples after a manual editing session to teach the AI your preferences.