Adobe Lightroom mobile adds one-tap AI fix for closed eyes

Adobe is adding a small but useful AI retouching feature to Lightroom on mobile: a one-tap way to open closed eyes in photos. According to The Verge, the feature is available in the Lightroom mobile app for iOS, iPadOS and Android, and is aimed at saving portraits and group shots where a blink spoils an otherwise usable image.

The update matters because it brings a familiar kind of generative image repair into a lightweight mobile workflow. For creators, social media managers and small businesses that often edit on a phone or tablet, the difference is less about making dramatic AI art and more about reducing the need to move a photo into a heavier desktop editor.

How Open Eyes works in Lightroom mobile

Adobe’s new feature is called Open Eyes Quick Action. When Lightroom mobile identifies a person, or multiple people, with closed eyes in a photo, the app can surface the tool automatically as an icon placed over the image, according to The Verge.

The fix is designed to be simple: tap the suggested action and Lightroom uses generative AI to create open eyes for the subject. Adobe says the generated result is meant to match the lighting and pose in the original image.

The app can also use other photos of the same person from the user’s Lightroom library as reference material. According to The Verge, that reference helps the AI match the person’s eye color, size and shape more closely.

For mobile-first editors, this is the practical point. A blink in a group shot usually means choosing a worse frame, asking for a reshoot, or doing manual repair work elsewhere. Lightroom’s new action turns that into an in-app suggestion when the software detects the problem.

Why this is different from older Adobe eye fixes

Adobe has offered a way to repair closed eyes in Photoshop Elements for close to a decade, The Verge notes, citing DPReview. But that older approach draws replacement eyes from another photo of the subject, and DPReview says the result can vary when the two images differ.

Lightroom mobile’s Open Eyes feature uses generative AI instead. That shift is important because the edit is not just copying from a second image; it is generating a repair that Adobe says aligns with the photo’s pose and lighting, while optionally referencing the user’s Lightroom library for personal details.

Adobe users can already attempt a comparable correction in Photoshop with its generative AI tools, according to The Verge. The difference is that Photoshop’s route is not presented as a one-tap mobile quick action, and The Verge says it is not free.

Adobe’s broader image AI work is associated with Adobe Firefly, its generative AI brand for creative tools, though The Verge’s report describes this Lightroom feature simply as using generative AI.

What free Lightroom users get

There is a limit for people using the free version of Lightroom mobile. According to DPReview, cited by The Verge, free users can try Open Eyes twice before the app asks them to subscribe to an Adobe Creative Cloud plan that includes more credits for Adobe’s AI-powered tools.

The source does not specify which plans include those credits, how many credits are provided, or whether the offer varies by region. For now, the clearest guidance is that free users can test the feature briefly, while heavier use is tied to a Creative Cloud subscription path.

For solo creators and small teams, that makes Open Eyes less of a standalone reason to subscribe and more of a workflow perk if Lightroom is already part of the editing stack. It may be most valuable for people who regularly handle event photos, team portraits, family sessions, product-with-people shots, or social content where retaking a photo is inconvenient.

What creators should watch next

This is a narrow feature, but it fits a broader pattern: AI photo editing is moving from specialist tools into small, contextual buttons inside everyday apps. Instead of asking users to write prompts or make detailed selections, Lightroom is detecting a common flaw and offering the repair at the moment it is needed.

That convenience also raises a familiar editorial question. Opening someone’s eyes can be a benign correction, especially for personal photos or marketing images where the aim is to use the best version of a scene. But it is still an AI-generated alteration to a person’s face, so teams should decide when the edit is acceptable and when an unmodified image is required.

For brands, the practical policy can be simple:

• use it for casual or promotional images where light retouching is already expected;
• avoid it for documentary, journalistic or evidence-based imagery;
• keep the original file when approvals or authenticity may matter.

AI image provenance and disclosure are becoming more visible across the industry, including tools such as Google’s SynthID site for checking AI-generated media, which we covered in this recent report. Lightroom’s Open Eyes update is another example of why those discussions now apply to everyday edits, not just fully generated images.