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Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
November 5, 2024
Answered

P: Reflection Removal feedback (CR & LrClassic)

  • November 5, 2024
  • 618 replies
  • 575152 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.”

618 replies

Participant
May 9, 2025

Hi there....
Just starting to use the reflection removal tools and first thoughts are we need a masking tool for it. I have a number of museum shoots where some of the reflections are important to the image composition. It would be great to be able to do that via masks or other region related tools.
Example would be to select subject and remove reflections only from the subject leaving the background reflections intact.

Participant
May 8, 2025

Does nothing!

Slider at -100% is just black?

Participant
July 12, 2025

Same here.

Participating Frequently
May 4, 2025

Reflection removed, but text becomes unreadable.

 

Adobe Employee
May 4, 2025

If you're referring to the text that is underneath the yellow part of the reflection, I'd say that is expected. The yellow reflection is so bright that there is probably only noise underneath it. The remove reflections tool will not hallucinate content in such cases, and so you'd end up with text that is difficult to read. 

Participating Frequently
May 8, 2025

Ce matin une nouvelle mise à jour de Camera Raw Version 17.31.2 mais l'outil supprimer les reflets ne fonctionne toujours pas pour moi. C'est à desespérer.!

Ineedafingscreenname
Known Participant
May 4, 2025

I have tried using this tool to remove reflections on the glass of a storefront. These reflections are usually chaotic details of what is found in the street outside the store, traffic, buildings across the street, and details of the sky. I am primarily an architectural retoucher, so such a tool would be excellent to have--particularly because circular polarizers do not remove all reflections in camera. I tried using this new AI tool on a recent project and I found that it applied no detectible changes whatsoever to my image. For context, I always begin retouch using raw files and combine multiple exposures to balance out light differences between interior and exterior. My system is a heavy duty Lenovo ThinkPad running Windows 11.  See examples below of how the tool failed to work on one of my raw exposures:

BEFORE


AFTER

Adobe Employee
May 4, 2025

Remove reflections will remove reflections from glass that blocks you from viewing your subject---glass that covers your field of view. It does not currently remove reflections in small panes of glass that are part of the scene. This is the intended design. In the future we plan to support additional uses such as architectural photography. 

 

Please see our blog post to better understand how to use the tool.

Participating Frequently
May 3, 2025

just ran this on a test pic, it is a jpeg. I waqs hoping it would remove the light reflections on the counter but it did nothing at all!

Adobe Employee
May 3, 2025

The remove reflections tool uses an icon that looks like a window pane. Did you notice this detail? The window icon was used because this tool is designed to remove reflections that form on windows when they block you from getting a clean shot of your subject behind the glass.

 

This photo you posted is of a kitchen, and it was not shot through glass. Hence the correct and expected output for the remove reflections tool is exactly what you posted. Why? Because if the tool were to remove all reflections on any object in the scene, suddenly you would be removing reflections from cars, shiny objects, distant buildings, people's faces, etc. The list is endless. Almost every real photo contains reflections from the surfaces of objects, and those photos would be destroyed if we removed those reflections. The remove reflection tool will remove reflections from glass surfaces that block you from getting a clean shot of your subject, and---quite magically---it is smart enough to not remove reflections from the objects in your scene. 

 

Please see our blog post to better understand how to use the tool.

PNog
Inspiring
May 2, 2025

It only managed to remove the reflections on the lighter side of the glass. What was most in the shadow remained untouched. Perhaps the algorithm failed to recognize the area as a reflection.

Participant
May 2, 2025

Reflection removal did not work for me. Sending the sample images.

Adobe Employee
May 2, 2025

Reflection removal will work best when there is content behind the reflection. In this case, there is nothing that can be seen through the window. If you'd like to invent new content to put inside the window, or make the window entirely black, generative fill is the appropriate tool to use. 

 

Regarding the drapes on the left, in the future we plan to support region masks for you to specify the areas in which you'd like the removal to focus. Please see our blog post to better understand how to use the tool.

Participant
May 3, 2025

Thank you for the clarification. Hope the Adobe team finds a solution for such tasks at the earliest.

Participant
May 2, 2025

it just made the whole image blurry didnt remove the glasses glare at all 

Adobe Employee
May 2, 2025

This tool does not currently support reflection removal in glasses. Please refer to the blog post to better understand how to use it.

photoretouchpro
Inspiring
May 1, 2025

I was hoping it would work with reflections in glasses with bright highlights but I does not. Please add this feature.

photoretouchpro
Inspiring
May 1, 2025

OK. I tried it with multiple images of people with glasses with reflections and it works ok with light reflections or blue screen reflections which would be fairly easy in photoshop. I would like at least a generative fill/fix as a starting point for further retouching.

Adobe Employee
May 2, 2025

This tool does not currently support reflection removal in glasses. Please refer to the blog post to better understand how to use it.

Participant
April 30, 2025

Would be amazing if this tool worked in the future with glares on peoples glasses!

Participating Frequently
April 30, 2025

Avant les lunettes, ce serait bien que cet outil fonctionne correctement sur tous les ordinateur. Ce qui, malheureusement, n'est pas le cas,  sur les iMac par exemple ça ne fonctionne toujours pas. Je plaide pour moi.