The latest updates to Camera Raw (18.5), Lightroom Classic (15.5) and Lightroom Desktop (9.5) have been released to customers via the Creative Cloud App. These updates include new camera and lens support along with some new features. There are also bug fixes for all.

Generative Expand [Camera Raw and Lightroom Desktop]

Originally, Generative Expand was only available in Camera Raw and did not make use of any AI to generate the fill areas. With this latest update to Camera Raw and Lightroom Desktop there is an option to use AI based expand utilising Firefly.

Generative Expand is located in ‘Crop and Expand’ panel as shown in below screenshot from Lightroom Desktop.

In below example, you can see  in the original photo that  bottom of the frame has been clipped.

Again, in below example the crop boundary is extended so that is beyond the original photo edges — Firefly generates new pixel content to fill the expanded canvas. You can use it to fill transparent areas from Geometric corrections, reframe photos for social media aspect ratios, or recover subjects that were clipped at capture.

Before Generative Expand

After Generative Expand

Initially, you get 3 variations of the fill, but further variations can be generated, if necessary. The filled area is a maximum of 2000 pixels on longest side.

Flatten Edits [Camera Raw and Lightroom Desktop]

Flatten Edits is a new automatic behaviour introduced with Generative Expand. Camera Raw and Lightroom Desktop flattens edits twice: first, it bakes in any existing pixel work (like Remove spots or the Enhance features such as Denoise) before generating. This ensures that the AI fill correctly “sees” edits you’ve already made. This is especially important when you’ve removed something along an edge, like a distracting branch or building, and then expand that same edge. After you keep the result, it flattens again to lock in the generated fill as fixed pixels, so the expanded content never has to be regenerated when you reopen the photo. Flattened edits can’t be individually adjusted afterward, but you can view them in the AI Edit Status popup or undo them by reverting to an earlier snapshot or version.

Render to DNG [All Clients]

Render to DNG is a new option added to the Edit/Context menus. It generates a new file that is a snapshot of your current settings, rendered to TIFF and wrapped in a DNG. The result is not raw — all edits are completely baked in, including masking, lens profiles, Lens Blur, and everything else in the Edit stack. Unlike Flatten Edits, which only bakes Remove-and-upstream filters, Render to DNG bakes the entire Edit stack. Render to DNG is especially helpful for Generative Expand workflows, when you want to begin your expansion from existing crop bounds rather than the original frame. It is also useful when you need to apply Super Resolution to a photo that has already had Denoise applied.

Masking Refinement [Lightroom Classic and Desktop]

Originally, introduced in Camera Raw 18.4, the new Masking Refinement sliders in the Masking panel of Lightroom Classic and Desktop enable finer control over AI Masks (i.e. Subject, Sky, Landscape, People and Object). The Feather slider (0-100) softens the transition at the masks boundary, while Edge (-50 to +50) shifts the boundary inward or outward. The benefit of this approach is that it avoids the need to use the mask brush.

Crop Improvements [Lightroom Classic]

Fans of the History panel will be overjoyed to see that Rotate and Flip are now recorded as history steps.

In-App lrcat-data Recovery [Lightroom Classic]

Lightroom Classic now prompts the users to repair lrcat-data if it finds issues/corruption related to same. This database contains the file related data associated with many of the AI based features in Lightroom Classic. For example: Denoise, Super Resolution and the various remove options found in the Generative Remove panel.

Typically, the lrcat-data file becomes corrupt if it and other catalog components are stored on cloud based storage such as OneDrive, DropBox, etc.