Just when you thought that Lightroom’s popular Remove tool was about as good as can be Adobe releases an upgrade that one expert refers to as “massive.” This tutorial from a notable educator explains how it works and explores how it lives up to the enthusiastic billing.

British instructor James posts twice weekly shooting and editing lessons on his Photo Feaver YouTube channel that are designed to help inexperienced photographers and Adobe users elevate their skills. We rely upon him often to demystify new or updated post-processing tools and today’s five-minute episode is an excellent example.

Before getting started Feaver provides the important reminder to first update Lightroom if you haven’t already done so. This means the July update 8.4 for Lightroom and version 14.4 for Lightroom Classic which is what he’s using for this demonstration.

The new tool is referred to as “Remove Distractions,” and it’s a  “bolt-on” to a pre-existing tool that Adobe calls “Generative Remove.” Feaver describes the differences like this: “With Generative Remove you have to manually select specific areas to remove them. But the new tool described today automatically detects both reflections and people and removes them from there.”

Feaver uses two photos to evaluate the precision of this promising tool, the first being a beautiful landscape he captured at Arches National Park that includes a few small but distracting hikers mucking up the otherwise pristine scene. Image number two s a nicely framed shot of London’s iconic St. Paul’s Cathedral  where’s there’s a bunch of visitors outside the pretty church.

The second shot is a much greater challenge because of its complicated background and the fact that the unwanted people are both larger and more plentiful. So how well does Lightroom’s improved tool handle these divergent situations? Follow along, learn the necessary steps, and decide for yourself.

Then head over to the very popular Photo Feaver YouTube channel for more helpful shooting and editing tutorials on topical techniques.

We also suggest watch our earlier tutorial with another post-processing expert who demonstrates a Photoshop technique for combining two or more images of the same scene to create a single composite photograph that screams “masterpiece.”

Last week we brought you an enlightening tutorial from Hamed Photography that described the many benefits of shooting action photos in Shutter Priority mode with Auto ISO. Today he’s following that up with this video demonstrating how combining Manual mode with Auto ISO provides full creative control over exposure without slowing you down.

Hamed explains why this approach strikes a perfect balance between control and efficiency for shooters of all skill levels, and he puts it like this: “This setup can be a total gamechanger whether you’re shooting fast action, street scenes, weddings or cinematic video.”

Switching the camera’s mode dial to “M” enables you to set both shutter speed and aperture to manage motion blur, depth of field, and exposure time. By enabling Auto ISO the camera adjusts sensitivity automatically to maintain a balanced exposure as lighting conditions change, “so you don’t have to ride the ISO dial constantly.”

This technique provides creative consistency across multiple images and is great choice for sports and wildlife photography under everchanging light. It also works well for shooting concerts and other events with mixed indoor/outdoor lighting. And Hamed explains how to specify minimum and maximum ISO values when using the Auto mode to avoid excessive noise or underexposed shots.

Conversely, there are times when this technique isn’t your best bet, such as when shooting in a controlled lighting environment where “full manual ISO may give you cleaner, more consistent results.” The same goes for long-exposure and astrophotography where a fixed ISO is critical.

Hamed walks you through various scenarios in barely 11 minutes so that you understand how all this works. There’s much more of interest on his instructional YouTube channel.

And don’t miss the tutorial mentioned above in which Hamed demonstrates how to speed up your workflow and avoid missing a special moment with a combination of Shutter Priority and Auto ISO.

Photoshop’s versatile Eyedropper tool enables you to make several significant enhancements to nature, landscape, and other types of images, and today’s tutorial from the popular PHLEARN YouTube channel explains how they work. There’s also an interesting trick that many of you will find surprising.

Instructor Aaron Nace is an expert at all things Adobe, and more than two million subscribers tune in to his how-to videos that are designed to simplify common post-processing methods. In barely six minutes you’ll learn how take advantage of the Eyedropper tool for sampling colors, creating multiple sample points, and changing the average sample size.

Nace explains the goal of his episode like this: “You’ll discover how to select foreground and background colors efficiently, and even replace a background with colors sampled directly from your images. He also reveals several timesaving keyboard shortcuts for streamlining this game-changing workflow.

Nace opens the tool by tapping the letter “I” which lets you click on a tone anywhere within the frame to change the foreground color of the shot. The Eyedropper includes a variety of useful options, like tapping the Point Sample tab atop the screen and zooming in to sample colors pixel by pixel for absolutely precise results. You can also specify an “average size” for the selection.

The same method is used to choose the background color instead, and there’s another keyboard shortcutto facilitate the process. There may be times when you want to track multiple points throughout the image. Doing so is a simple as holding down the Shift key, after which you can click on each individual point.

Photoshop will store these colors in the Info panel with the RGB values included. When doing this the Color Sampler tool appears and Nace explains how to proceed further. Once you’re done watching and adding this technique to your everyday workflow check out the PHLEARN YouTube channel for more editing tips and techniques.

We also recommend watching the earlier tutorial we featured with another post-processing expert who demonstrates a simple way to use focus stacking in Photoshop and Lightroom to create stunning landscape photographs with maximum sharpness all the way from front to back.