Answered

P: Reflection Removal feedback (CR & LrClassic)

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
November 5, 2024
537 replies
564501 views

This post applies to Adobe Camera Raw plug-in.

Adobe Camera Raw team is sharing an early look of our new Reflection Removal feature, which removes reflections caused by plate glass surfaces from photos.

Note:

~~The feature currently only works on raw photos.~~ Support for JPEGs & HEICs is added in the April 24 Update.

There is a known issue on some Windows machines where the feature may produce a corrupt image. We are working on a fix for the upcoming release.

Check out HelpX for more detailed usage information. For more technical information on the underlying technology, please refer to this Blog post.

Getting started with the Reflection Removal feature:

Make sure you have the “New AI Features and Settings Panel” Technology Preview enabled in the Camera Raw plug-in Preferences dialog (requires restarting the host application to activate).

Go to the Remove panel [B] , and in the “Distraction Removal” section, click on the “Reflections” checkbox.

Optionally adjust the slider after the ML model is done computing.

Use the rest of the Camera Raw tools just like you would otherwise.

When using the slider, the key values to note are:

0 – the input photo

100 – de-reflected (window reflections removed) photo

-100 – reflection photo (what the window was reflecting towards the camera)

Please try the feature and share feedback in this community forum. It would help to include details like how you access Camera Raw (via Adobe Bridge or Photoshop), your computer system details, and as much information about what you like or do not like about the resulting photo quality. Our team will continually monitor this thread to track issues to improve the future experience.

When to use Reflection Removal

The feature is designed to deal with large-area reflections when shooting through windows. Many other types of reflections occur in nature and are captured in photographs, but this feature may not recognize and handle those. We plan to work on expanding the supported reflection types in the future.

Example use-cases for the feature include:

Looking through windows inside-out (e.g., from the car, airplane, room windows, etc.)

Looking through windows outside-in (e.g., shop windows)

Museums (e.g., paintings behind glass, glass case exhibits, etc.)

How best to use Reflection Removal

For best results, try the new feature following these suggestions:

Apply Reflection Removal before applying any other edits to the photo, except for Enhance features such as Denoise
- The changes made to the photo may be quite profound and render any changes you already made inappropriate.
- If you plan to use both Enhance (Denoise, Super Resolution, or Raw Details) and Reflection Removal on a photo, it is better to apply Enhance first.
Play with the feature slider and adjust the removal strength as appropriate.
If you applied Adobe Adaptive (beta) profile prior to running the Reflection Removal feature, please update it or you may see traces of removed reflections still present in the photo (Adobe Camera Raw will remind you to do this).

Boris Ajdin: Product Manager, Emerging Products Group

Update (01-16-2025)

To improve the performance and results of this feature, it is important that examples of images that are failing to properly remove the reflections are forwarded to the team via your report. A large variety of file formats are allowed as attachments in these forum posts. The best option is to attach your image's raw file directly to your feedback post. Note that there is a 50 MB limit on an attachment's file size. If your raw file is too large to attach, the best option is to share the file via a file-sharing service (Dropbox or similar) and then share the link in your feedback post. Thank you for continuing to provide feedback on this Tech Preview!

If you have already shared your raw file with us - thank you!

~Rikk

Posted by:

Correct answer Conrad_C

This reply, earlier in this thread, explains why:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/camera-raw-discussions/p-reflection-removal-feedback-cr-amp-lrclassic/m-p/15405349#M28971

Also, it isn’t called “glare reduction.”

Show previous replies

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bobbyatk

Inspiring

Tried reflection removal to help reduce the cloudiness caused by particulate matter in pool water.
I'd like to see ACR capability increase in this area, and perhaps also in underwater backscatter (from lights) reduction.
ACR was launhed from bridge, image then opened in PS 26.9.0. Layer was duplicated, converted to smart object, and opened in ACR 17.4.1.2280 as a filter.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

Just curious, how effective do you find the Dehaze option to be for underwater photography?

The reason I ask is that I wouldn’t expect reflection removal to work well for this. I’m not an underwater photography expert and I don’t work for Adobe, but from what Adobe has said reflection removal is trained using machine learning/AI to specifically address reflections of window glass between viewer and subject. But for underwater photos the problem is totally different. It isn’t about plane reflections at all, but the kind of contrast and detail reduction that is much more related to particulate haze and light diffusion as you mentioned. Although the Dehaze model is said to be built around how haze is formed through air, it seems like it would be a better match to clearing up underwater haze than reflection removal would be.

It would be nice to have an underwater feature that addressed water-specific haze and the color shift from the way water unevenly filters the daylight color spectrum. That does get even further away from what reflection removal is about.

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Eric29489323q7t4

Adobe Employee

Although Conrad is right that this underwater photo is technically not what the tool is designed to do, I agree that its interesting to try anyway. People have been using this tool for other things as well, like fence removal and flare removal. It will also sometimes remove reflections from the surface of water if you are looking down into the water at an object that is clearly visible (e.g., tide pools and other shallow waters). Underwater photos like the one attached here are quite different in nature, as Conrad points out, so it's less likely that the tool will do what you are hoping. Check out the Adobe blog to learn more about future directions for this tool.

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MJG18

Participant

Removal of reflections did not work

Michael Gough

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TxRanger

Inspiring

LRC reflection removal worked well on one photo that had very obvious reflections. On this photo, taken from a bus, it could not distinguish the reflections before or after I used Denoise.

Reflections-5044.zip

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Eric29489323q7t4

Adobe Employee

Please share the image. It seems you've attached the xmp file instead?

egelbarr

Participant

This is the first time I've tried using reflection removal. I did a good job on parts of the image, but missed on other (obvious?) parts of the image. I have included screen shots below from Lightroom. Happy to send RAW file if needed.

You can see below that it removed reflections along the sides and in the bottom 3 rows of windows, but did nothing along top row of windows where the reflecdtions seemed (to me) to be the strongest.

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Eric29489323q7t4

Adobe Employee

This is a terrific result. Thanks for sharing. As you probably know, the remove reflections tool is designed to remove reflections from glass that is in-between the camera and the subject of the photo (see the Adobe blog). Photos like this one are difficult because the subject is ambiguous: are you photographing the building, or the content within the building? While the answer might seem obvious to you as you look at this photo, there are a great many other photos in which a building has reflections on it and the user does not want to remove those reflections: imagine almost any photo you take of a building as you are standing on a city street outdoors. To resolve that ambiguity, this tool assumes that everything in your camera view is your subject, and it only removes reflections if there is a pane of glass blocking your entire subject. That is not the case for photos of buildings, like the one above, so the reflection removal result is more conservative (slightly incomplete). We will continue to work to improve the tool so you can use it as you need. Stay tuned for updates!

egelbarr

Participant

Thanks for the explanation! This was my first time using the tool, so I did not know what to expect. Your explanation makes sense. I'll keep that in mind whne shooting reflections. Any plans to make this a local adjustment?

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VisualsBySaurabh

Participant

okay so, i have been watching lot of videos regarding this outstanding feature, it removes reflections flawlessly but when right now when I used it for the first time, i was dissapointed. I have attached the screenshot, it can be seen clearly that, this feature could remove the glare, yes it added the contrast as well, actual reflections were not removed, I applied the BEST RESULT setting only, still.
May be it could not detect the reflection properly.
But that doesn't mean it is bad feature, it is just on the early stages and may be in future updates it could remove better.
Just an honest feedback

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Eric29489323q7t4

Adobe Employee

I would encourage you to check out the Adobe blog post about this tool. That way, you can learn more about how to get best results with it, and future plans we have.

M

Memoex

Participant

I have a series of airplane pictures that I took through the window of a tour bus. The tool usually does a pretty good job with these pictures. But with this one, it didn't catch any reflections. Maybe it's useful.

A7_01268-ARW.zip

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Eric29489323q7t4

Adobe Employee

Thank you for sharing the RAW photo. It does remove a subtle reflection in the lower right, but misses the subtle reflection in the center. Results might not always succeed, as you probably know. Please consider also sharing some of the success cases. That can be helpful as well.

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Seb29

Known Participant

Did not work using the Best preview. Also, it must work on a certain parts of a photo and not the entire photo itself. Any ideas?

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Eric29489323q7t4

Adobe Employee

This photo looks to be unusually low in quality—it looks heavily compressed, poorly exposed, and noisy. Is it a JPEG? Reflection removal will work best on DNGs, and these quality factors I mentioned might degrade results especially if it is a JPEG image. Just like most lightroom features, remove reflections will work best on RAW images.

Also, note that the quality setting does not affect whether remove reflections succeeds or fails. It improves the sharpeness of the result. You can quickly evaluate the result by using lower quality settings. If you like the result at low quality, you can select "best" to create a sharper version of that result.

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Seb29

Known Participant

It was a selection from the full image. However having the same issues from a RAW photo. See attached. Thoughts?

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shussey121

Participant

The feature seems completely useless. It made the entire image slightly darker, but did nothing to address any reflections in windows.

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Eric29489323q7t4

Adobe Employee

Please share a screen capture of the photo you are trying to fix. Most of the time folks are not understanding what reflections the tool is designed to remove. You can also checkout the Adobe blog to learn more about the tool.

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satisfied_video5D97

Known Participant

I observed that some reflection removal fails because the denoise setting is more than the default 50. I have an .CR3 from Canon R5 taking in museum with ISO 6400. I denoise it and increase the value to 75, then using Reflection Removal, It does very little improvement. I then change the value of denoise back to 50 and do the Reflection Removel again. The reflection has all gone. Usually, I take 3 bracketed photos and the second one with exposure bias -1 will be the best one for reflection removal.