Lightroom mobile now opens closed eyes in one tap, and free users get two tries

Adobe’s Lightroom app for phones and tablets can now open a person’s closed eyes in a photo with a single tap. When the app spots someone mid-blink, an Open Eyes button appears over the image as a Quick Action, and generative AI paints in a new pair of open eyes. For anyone who has lost a good group shot to one person blinking, a discarded picture becomes a keeper without a reshoot.

The tool works on portraits of one person and on group shots, and Adobe says it only edits the area that needs fixing, leaving the rest of the face alone. If your Lightroom library holds other pictures of the same person, the app uses them as a reference to match eye color, shape and size, so the result looks like that person and not like a stock pair of eyes. Open Eyes runs in the Lightroom mobile app on iPhone, iPad and Android.

Adobe has sold a version of this fix for years. Photoshop Elements has offered a closed-eyes tool for close to a decade, copying the eyes from another photo of the same subject, and as DPReview pointed out, the results suffered whenever the lighting or head angle differed between the two shots. Photoshop can already do the job with its Generative Fill tool, but that needs a paid subscription and several manual steps. Open Eyes puts the same kind of repair behind one button in a free app.

The free part has a ceiling. People on the free version of Lightroom mobile can use Open Eyes twice before the app asks them to subscribe to an Adobe AI or Creative Cloud plan, according to DPReview, which tested the feature. Adobe’s own announcement calls the fix free in one tap and does not mention the cap. DPReview also reported that the app’s interface pointed to Google‘s Nano Banana image model, not Adobe’s own Firefly, as the engine behind the edit. Adobe has not confirmed which model it uses.

Generated eyes also reopen the argument over what still counts as a photograph. An edited shot shows a moment that did not quite happen, and DPReview’s reviewer wrote that they could not imagine using the tool, since a laugh too big to keep your eyes open is part of what makes some pictures special. Nothing in Adobe’s announcement says whether an Open Eyes edit is labeled as AI-altered when the photo is shared.

Phone makers have offered blink fixes before, but most of them merge several frames instead of generating new eyes. Google’s Best Take on Pixel phones, for example, swaps in a face from another shot taken seconds apart, so it only helps if you took a quick burst. Open Eyes works from a single frame, including older photos already sitting in a Lightroom library.

Adobe added a second tool at the same time. Generative Expand extends a picture beyond its original edges and fills in the missing scenery, so a horizontal travel shot can be reframed for a vertical social post or given more room around the subject.

Adobe announced both tools on October 19, and they are available now in the Lightroom app for iOS, iPadOS and Android. The announcement lists no regional restrictions. Like the rest of Lightroom’s Quick Actions, Open Eyes does not yet appear in the desktop version of Lightroom, and Adobe has not said whether it will arrive there.

Tags: Generative AI, Adobe, Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, mobile photography, Open Eyes