Julieanne Kost’s demo of Adobe Camera Raw’s new cropping with generative expand (AI-powered) is typically no-nonsense and crystal-clear. OK, it might not feel like photography any longer, but surely there must be times when you get the picture almost perfect in camera – the almost being the crop. In some cases, the built-in lens correct may have shaved off a crucial bit from one side of the frame, and in those cases your conscience can remain clean!

There’s also a great explanation of the point behind the new render DNG command, for when principles don’t matter so much.

But when will generative expand come to Real Lightroom? I wish I could say! At least you can hope it won’t be too long, because “Classic” does read and apply ACR’s generative expand settings. So for now you just have to be ingenious.

Using Adobe Camera Raw:

1. CmdS/CtrlS to save your work back to a picture
2. CmdR/CtrlR to go to Finder/Explorer
3. Open the picture in Bridge or Photoshop
4. Do the generative expand cropping
5. Click Done which saves the edit
6. In Lightroom, Metadata > Read Metadata from file

Using Cloudy Lightroom

Secondly, Cloudy Lightroom can do the job (it has to be useful for something). So if the photo is synced to Adobe’s cloud, make the generative expand crop in Cloudy Lightroom and allow the adjustments to sync back to your catalogue.

Use with discretion, of course 😉