P: Reflection Removal feedback (CR & LrClassic)

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

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:

[oldpiefke]

Hey dear all,

I am working with MacPro with Sequoia 15.3.2 and LrC 14.4 

The feature emove reflextions is working in most cases, but the picture attached is in none of the three options : vorschau, standard or best working. Does mean some room for improvements for the next update

best regards from Cadolzburg 

Franz-Josef

[Eric29489323q7t4]

This is a photo of many pictures hanging on the wall. The subject is the wall, the picture frames and arrangement, and the pictures. Reflection removal has correctly determined that there is not glass between you and all of those elements of your composition. The tool therefore does not remove a window reflection (because there is no window). In the future we're looking into removing small reflections like eyeglasses and distant windows. See the blog to learn more about what this tool does.

[oldpiefke]

Exactly, this was the case. It has been a test, what potential is in the current application release

Greetings and a nice weekend

Franz-Josef

[thomask69661824]

The effect is global vs targeted. I was trying it on reflections in a persons glasses and it didn't do very well. It made global adjustments to the entire photo instead of focusing on the glasses. If I could apply a brush to localize the effect I think it might work better.

[Eric29489323q7t4]

That is correct and intended. In the future we're looking into removing small reflections like eyeglasses and distant windows. See the blog to learn more about what this tool does.

[Jo�o_Rebelo3781]

Hello there, so I retouch a lot of  media displays photography and there's some with a lot of reflections and some with a blue reflections due to the glass anti-UV treatment.  In this cases this tool doesn't work yet but i would love to see this working.

[Eric29489323q7t4]

Thank you. We are continuing to improve the tool. 

[MarcySB]

I am on a Windows 11 machine with the latest versions of everything installed - updated yesterday. I just tried this for the first time in Photoshop CR. It did not do a great job. I was trying to remove reflections in a grandfather clock (before and after attached). It removed the bokeh caused by the camera and the room lights, but did not see ay of the reflections in the clock workings area of the clock itself. This is a tough one because it is not really through a window. Maybe for future improvements.

[Eric29489323q7t4]

This is a photo of a grandfather clock, a hallway, and a door behind the grandfather clock. There is not a pane of glass that is blocking the view of the hallway, frame of the clock, door, floor, etc.. The tool has therefore correctly determined that there is no glass blocking your view of the subjects, and removed nothing. Please try shooting photos where glass is covering and thus blocking the view of all of the the subjects of the photo. In the future we are looking into removing small reflections like eyeglasses and distant windows like the one on this clock. To learn more about what this tool does, check out the blog. 

[ERICKSON_ORTIZ6530]

This tool is very good, but it would be better if it had the way to select where one wants to fix such as a brush because it is also the case that we can help to erase the reflections of the lenses, when one takes a photograph and someone has lenses, the reflections of the Flash light come out or they would have to get a new tool that automatically erases the Flash lighting.

[Eric29489323q7t4]

In the future we are looking into removing small reflections like eyeglasses and distant windows/panes of glass. To learn more about what this tool does, check out the blog. 

[DrSo]

Reflections Removal is a Great Tool

for Example for shots taken from an Airplane over water, improves photo very much

but

- takes an awful lot of time per photo (3 min). Function doesn't use parallel cpu cores, this slows it down 

- Function crashes when used on more then 4 photos in one setting, LR needs to be restarted. I'm using 64GB RAM, so it shouldn't run out on RAM

[Eric29489323q7t4]

Please post your system information, and which quality mode is the default you are using.

[Conrad_C]

- takes an awful lot of time per photo (3 min). Function doesn't use parallel cpu cores, this slows it down 

By @DrSo

I think reflection removal works similarly to the other newer features based on machine learning/AI, such as Denoise: They all depend on having a fast GPU.

They use the CPU very little or not at all, and it’s probably better that way. Making the CPU do it would actually be slower and probably consume more power and create more heat. As applications (such as photo editors and video editors) shift appropriate tasks to the GPU or other coprocessors like a media engine, those tasks finish faster and run cooler than was possible on the CPU alone.

For example, there are laptops that have relatively few CPU cores but they can denoise an image in less than 20 seconds, because they have a recent or powerful GPU.

[Eric29489323q7t4]

Please also consider using different quality settings. LrC currently defaults to "best" which can be slower for very large images. The quality settings are designed to allow you to preview results, and generate results for applications that don't require full resolution outputs (e.g., social media posts). 

[bdewittsd]

I have tried a couple of times to use this feature to remove reflections in people's eyeglasses and it does not seem to work.  So I assume that this feature is limited to windows or larger areas.

[Erik Bloodaxe]

It is not designed to do that job so will not achieve what you desire. At least not currently.

[Eric29489323q7t4]

Erik is right. Please check out the blog to learn more about what this tool does, and what it might do in the future.

[copetersen!]

I was hoping this would work on eyeglasses, but it seems it does not. Do you have any plans doing something simular for eyeglass reflections?

[Eric29489323q7t4]

Yes. Please checkout the Adobe blog post, which mentions that among other things.

[ricp2206]

Rikk, while the tool works fantastically well on reflexions, the rest of the raw photo becames unfocused. This is done on originally very sharp images. 

[Chapps-LA · Accepted solution]

Are you sure you're using the 'best' setting and not 'preview'? Preview will certainly show you a blurry pic. But on certain images, reflection removal removes too much, and you get a muddle. Adjusting the intensity slider can help. 

[robworld]

Thank you so much for that feature! 

It is also working great, if you have milky parts in the picture (raindrop on lens...)

[Eric29489323q7t4]

Thanks for letting us know!

[DustinInToronto]

Lightroom Classic (14.4) the remove relfections tool simply does not work. After it computes, no change. In Camera Raw however it does work - and the compute time is also longer. Something is very different about the back end of the tool in CR vs LrC. 

For refrence I'm on Windows 11 Pro, 24H2, Build 26120.4452, GPU: Nvidia RTX 4070, driver: Studio 576.80