Lightroom’s mobile app is eye-opening – literally – but some photographers are upset the editing software is now called an “AI Photo Editor”

A photo showing the new Open Eyes tool on Lightroom mobile — (Image credit: Adobe)

Lightroom’s free mobile app can now fix a longstanding photography problem: the photo taken mid-blink. Open Eyes is a new Quick Action inside Lightroom’s mobile app – which now has “AI Photo Editor” added to its name in the App Store.

Open Eyes is a Quick Action inside the mobile app – Lightroom won’t show the option unless it detects a photo that has the eyes closed. But when that Open Eyes icon appears, Lightroom makes the eye swap in one tap to correct closed eyes inside portraits, selfies, and group shots.

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The Open Eyes tool is built with generative AI – which begs the question: how can the AI get things like eye color and shape accurate when that information is not in the original photo?

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While Lightroom can generate open eyes without any references, the mobile app also allows users to select reference photos of that same person, in order to generate a set of eyes that more closely match the person’s features.

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The new tool uses generative AI to simplify a common photography edit. Photographers have long used platforms like Photoshop to correct a blink by copying a person’s eyes from one photo and pasting them onto another – particularly for group photos where the odds of getting a blink are much higher, even when taking several photographs.

While the new eye-opening tool is built using generative AI, Adobe says that the tool is one of the free tools available inside Lightroom mobile.

Open Eyes is far from the mobile app’s only generative AI tool, joining options like Generative Expand, Generative Remove, and Photo to Video. In the App Store, the iOS version of the app is now listed as “Lightroom: AI Photo Editor.” (On Google Play, the app is Lightroom Photo & Video Editor).

The description looks more like a search term to aid those looking for photo apps in the App Store than an official name change, but some photographers across Reddit and Threads have expressed disappointment over the name change – and the push for generative AI features.

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With more than a decade of experience writing about cameras and technology, Hillary K. Grigonis leads the US coverage for Digital Camera World. Her work has appeared in Business Insider, Digital Trends, Pocket-lint, Rangefinder, The Phoblographer, and more. Her wedding and portrait photography favors a journalistic style. She’s a former Nikon shooter and a current Fujifilm user, but has tested a wide range of cameras and lenses across multiple brands. Hillary is also a licensed drone pilot.