How to Open Closed Eyes in Lightroom (New Open Eyes Feature)

How to Open Closed Eyes in Lightroom With the New Open Eyes Feature

Open Eyes is Adobe’s new one-tap fix for a blink. When someone’s eyes are closed in a photo, Lightroom on your phone spots it and offers to open them with generative AI. We tested it on a real blink of Aaron’s, a frame from one of our tutorial recordings, ran it twice, compared the results with frames where his eyes really were open, and checked what sets the credit price. Every step and every result is below, and the blink frame plus two real open-eye frames are in the downloads, so you can run Open Eyes on the same photos.

Step 1: Find Open Eyes in the Quick Actions

Open the photo with the closed eyes in the Lightroom mobile app and tap Actions at the bottom left. Lightroom analyzes the photo and fills the Quick Actions row with the edits it suggests. If anyone’s eyes are closed, an Open Eyes button appears on the right of that row. If you don’t see it, Lightroom didn’t detect closed or half-closed eyes, or you’re not in the mobile app: as of October 19, 2026 Open Eyes isn’t in Lightroom Classic or Lightroom on the desktop.

The first time, Lightroom shows a screen that explains the feature, shows your monthly credits, asks you to confirm you’re 18 or older and tells you Open Eyes runs on a partner model that Adobe didn’t make. Tap Get started.

Step 2: Check the Price Under Generate, Then Tap It

Lightroom prints the cost right under the Generate button before you spend anything. On Aaron’s 3840 x 2160 frame it read Uses 20 credits. Every photo we tried with one face to fix cost 20, whatever its size: a 3840-pixel copy, a 6720 x 4480 original and a heavily compressed re-encode all said 20. The one time it read Uses 40 credits was a 24-megapixel group shot with two blinking faces far apart, so the price seems to follow how much of the photo Open Eyes has to regenerate rather than the pixel count. Read the number under Generate before you tap.

The credits are spent as soon as you tap Generate, and every new attempt on the same photo costs the same again. For scale, Adobe’s Lightroom mobile and web plan comes with 100 generative credits a month: five fixes at 20 credits. Adobe’s announcement calls Open Eyes free, and DPReview reports two free uses on a free account before a subscription prompt. On our paid plan every try cost credits, so the number under Generate is the one to trust. Our guide to generative credits explains how credits work across Photoshop and Lightroom, and Photoshop’s new Relight layer is another new feature that charges for every try.

Step 3: Wait, Then Long Press for the Before and After

The progress bar runs through Finding reference photos, Reading your photo, Matching their eyes (when it has other photos to work from) and Applying fix with Nano Banana 2. On our phone the whole thing took well under a minute. When it’s done, hold your finger on the photo to see the closed eyes, and let go to see the new ones. Tap the checkmark at the bottom right to keep the result, then pinch to zoom in on the eyes.

Step 4: Compare With a Real Photo, and Generate Again If You Need To

Swipe to a nearby photo where the eyes really are open and zoom in on the same spot. Check the color of the irises, the catchlights and the shape of the eyelids, and look at the whole face, not just the eyes. Not happy? Go back, tap Reset, choose Reset all and run Open Eyes again. You get a new result, and you spend the credits again.

In the video we ran it twice on the same blink, and the two results weren’t the same. The first run opened the eyes and also raised Aaron’s eyebrows (“I look more surprised”). The second run opened only the eyes. Drag the sliders to compare each run with the original.

And the eyes themselves? In the video, Aaron puts each result next to a real frame from a fraction of a second earlier (the same frames are in the sample images below): the generated irises came out browner and more saturated than his real eyes, and a little narrower, while the catchlights sit in the right place. Aaron knows his own face better than anyone, and he thinks most people wouldn’t be able to tell.

Honestly, they fit in pretty well. The catch light looks good, the color looks decent. It didn’t nail it, but the fact that you can do this with a click of a button is insane.

Aaron Nace, comparing the generated eyes with his own

The AI Behind Open Eyes

Open Eyes doesn’t use Adobe Firefly. Adobe’s announcement only says “partner model”, but the progress bar named it: Applying fix with Nano Banana 2, Google’s image model, the same family you can pick in Photoshop (see partner models in Photoshop and Nano Banana Pro in Photoshop). Desktop looks likely to follow: Camera Raw 18.7 already contains the text for an Open Eyes panel that isn’t switched on yet.

When to Use Open Eyes, and When Not To

Aaron’s take: “Personally, I think this is a pretty cool feature. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty cool we can do it with a single button click.” It works best on group portraits and on people far from the camera, where the eyes are small and several people can be fixed in one go. On a close-up the eyes are the most important part of the picture, and that’s where the small differences in color and shape show. If you’d rather catch the blink before you edit, AI Assisted Culling in Lightroom can flag closed eyes, and our Lightroom mobile tutorial covers the rest of the app.

It does work on group shots. In this photo of three friends on a couch, the woman on the right had her eyes shut mid-laugh. One run opened them for 20 credits and left the other two faces alone. Drag the slider to compare.

Would you use this on a picture of someone else without telling them and say that it passes for the real face?

Aaron Nace’s question for you

Let us know in the comments on the video.

Quick Reference: Where It Is, What It Costs, How to Redo It

• Find Open EyesActions (bottom left) > Quick Actions > Open Eyes
• Where it worksLightroom mobile app only (as of October 19, 2026)
• What it costs20 credits on every one-face photo we tried, 40 on a 24 MP group shot with two faces; shown under Generate
• AI modelNano Banana 2, a Google partner model, not Firefly
• See the before and afterLong press the photo
• Keep the resultCheckmark at the bottom right
• Try againReset > Reset all, then Open Eyes again (the credits again)