Julieanne Kost’s demo of Adobe Camera Raw’s new cropping with Generative Expand (AI-powered) is typically no-nonsense and crystal-clear. There’s also a great explanation of the idea behind the new render DNG command.

I certainly don’t advocate Generative Expand for routine use. After all, creating new pixels on computer should cross one’s ethical red lines and may no longer feel like “photography”. But surely there must be times when you get the crop almost perfect in camera – and just a few extra pixels, so few your conscience isn’t too troubled! In fact in some cases the built-in lens correction may have shaved off a crucial bit from one side of the frame, so that’s OK, isn’t it? Now and again, Generative Expand is going to come in handy.

But in Lightroom?

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. What’s missing is the UI and any mechanism for charging for AI credits.

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). Use it in Local mode.