Exit
  • Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
  • 한국 커뮤니티
56

P: Reflection Removal feedback (CR & LrClassic)

Adobe Employee ,
Nov 05, 2024 Nov 05, 2024

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:

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
TOPICS
macOS , Windows
456.5K
Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines

correct answers 14 Correct answers

New Here , May 13, 2025 May 13, 2025

I think I figured it out - it was a reflection in a window in the background that  couldn't be removed. When I did a test shot through a window, it worked well. 

Translate
Contributor , Jun 28, 2025 Jun 28, 2025

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. 

Translate
Community Expert , Jul 07, 2025 Jul 07, 2025

Removing eyeglass reflections is a goal Adobe mentioned in their blog post from last December (Removing window reflections in Adobe Camera Raw), so at least we know they’re interested in working on it. 

 

Adobe-remove-reflections-blog-post-eyeglasses.png

Translate
Community Expert , Jul 07, 2025 Jul 07, 2025

Those results are consistent with a lot of the reports in this thread…it works fine on recent computers (for Macs, that means Apple Silicon M1 through M4 work great), but there seems to be a problem with the graphics drivers for the GPU in some Intel Macs, and this feature relies heavily on the GPU. Because Mac graphics drivers are supplied by Apple, it might need a macOS update to get fixed. But we never know exactly what Apple will fix in the next macOS update, so no guarantees.

Translate
Contributor , Jul 20, 2025 Jul 20, 2025

Did you by any chance just use the 'preview' mode instead of the best mode? A lot of people have been making that error, and the preview mode is intentionally low res.

Translate
Explorer , Aug 02, 2025 Aug 02, 2025

Seems Quality is on "preview". Try setting it on "best".

Translate
Explorer , Aug 12, 2025 Aug 12, 2025

Eric,

do I understand it well the reflections will only be removed when the glass plate fills the whole frame of the picture. As it won't remove reflections from a windows that's part of a larger picture. 

Translate
Explorer , Aug 14, 2025 Aug 14, 2025

I tried to cut part of the picture, so only a small part of the window remains. Feed only the small part to the reflection removal and paste it back into the original picture, using Photoshop. It's not perfect, but ..
I noticed doing this, the reflection feature reacts differently than using the entire picture. With the entire picture I can't get any reflection off either.

Translate
Explorer , Aug 15, 2025 Aug 15, 2025

well Eric, since I tempory used the jpg picture kastalia67_s provided, I had to work in jpeg. I only shoot RAW and I only use Ps. Just wanted to see what it would do if I narrowed the view to just a part of that car window like it was one whole picture. And it did work. 
If I can use that technique with a RAW, the result can only be better.
Looking forward to see support for small panes of glass in RAW.

Translate
Adobe Employee , Aug 15, 2025 Aug 15, 2025

FitzFoto, that suggestion will not work. That crop will not change the RAW result. To remove reflections from a cropped region you must convert the RAW image to a PNG/TIFF/JPEG.

 

Here is one workflow:

1. Open the image in Lightroom.

2. Make a virtual copy, and crop the virtual copy

3. Export the original and cropped image as TIFF files

4. Open the original and cropped TIFF in Photoshop

5. Use the Camera RAW filter to remove reflections from the cropped image

6. Copy the clean, cropped image int

...
Translate
Adobe Employee , Aug 15, 2025 Aug 15, 2025

Kastalia, please precisely follow the steps I enumerated. It will work. There are other variants that will work, but not what you did. 

 

FitzFhoto, as you probably know, when you crop a RAW photo in Lr or ACR, the underlying image is not modified. Specifying a crop simply tells Lr/ACR how to render that RAW image onto your screen. The remove reflections tool operates before the crop is applied by Lr/ACR when your RAW is rendered onto your screen. Why? There is a long list of usability issues th

...
Translate
Community Beginner , Aug 15, 2025 Aug 15, 2025

Hi Eric,
I just tested your steps, precisely.
Screen capture shows you a little reflection suppress in part of the girls face.
Well it is the best I could achieve up to now.

Here are the steps :

1. Open the image in Lightroom.

2. Make a virtual copy, and crop the virtual copy

3. Export the original and cropped image as TIFF files

4. Open the original and cropped TIFF in Photoshop

5. Use the Camera RAW filter to remove reflections from the cropped image

6. Copy the clean, cropped image into the original

7.

...
Translate
Explorer , Aug 16, 2025 Aug 16, 2025

That explains, why it removed some of the reflections in my workflow. I didn't actually crop the picture. I marked the area, copied, created a new image and paste only that part. So, it had no other information of a larger picture when I applied the reflection removal.
Then I copied the result back to the original picture and aligned it.

Translate
Community Expert , Aug 20, 2025 Aug 20, 2025

That’s expected…the feature is currently designed to remove reflections in a window filling the entire image frame between camera and subject. Eyeglasses only cover a small area of the frame so they aren’t handled yet. But in the original Adobe blog post announcing reflection removal, they did say they’d like to handle eyeglasses in a future update.

 

Since the blog post was published last December they did add support for some non-raw formats, extended the feature to Lightroom, and just introdu

...
Translate
replies 1115 Replies 1115
Community Beginner ,
Dec 22, 2024 Dec 22, 2024

I tried loading a Fuji RAF file (RAW) and an Adobe DNG file.  In both instances I got as "Not Compatible wit the File Format" error message.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Dec 22, 2024 Dec 22, 2024

I think this is a very promising new feature. I am a portrait photographer, and as such I take a lot of photos of people with their glasses on. Every glasses lens seems to be different of course and it would be wonderful if the algorithm could remove glare from speedlights or strobes. Sometimes, depending on the angle or the lens, you are stuck with a bit of a relection. I thought this would be a great way to remove lens reflections. I've played with it a bit with limited success, but if you folks are looking at ways to refine the algorithm, it would be a huge asset to me. Thank you for your attention.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Dec 23, 2024 Dec 23, 2024

J'ai testé la nouvelle fonction "réflexions". Mais cela ne fonctionne pas du tout sur les lunettes.

 

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Adobe Employee ,
Dec 30, 2024 Dec 30, 2024

Please refer to this Blog post to understand how to use the remove reflection tool, and when it is most effective.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Dec 23, 2024 Dec 23, 2024

Reflection removal produces hash

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Engaged ,
Dec 23, 2024 Dec 23, 2024

I've continued experimenting with the Reflection Removal feature of ACR and have found that it does a pretty good job of removing lens flare from images shot looking into the sun.  My test files were Nikon .nef files shot with a D850.  I also noticed that it is sensitive to the order in which ACR is activated.  It seems that one must open the raw image directly from Photoshop and not throught Adobe Bridge.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Dec 24, 2024 Dec 24, 2024

Or directly from Lightroom Classic, which also disables the tool. 

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Engaged ,
Dec 23, 2024 Dec 23, 2024

I tried another image with lens flare, this time a lot more complicted.  The Remove Reflection worked well on it.

Here's the beginning image as it appeared in ACR:

BillJunk_0-1734973985858.png

Here's what it looked like after removing the "reflections."

BillJunk_1-1734974068588.png

Notice that I still have a burned out warning about the center of the sun, but all of the reflections inside the lens that resulted in the multiple lens flare spots are gone.  And the nice thing about this is that it did not try to remove the star bust rays from the sun.  A couple years ago I spent a long time cleaning up this image with traditional tools in Photoshop.

 

After a couple minutes in ACR here's what I had:

BillJunk_2-1734974338938.png

There's still more work that needs to be done, but the "repair" that was previously very tedious was accomplished in a couple minutes.  Being able to focus on the creative changes is really nice.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Adobe Employee ,
Dec 30, 2024 Dec 30, 2024

Thank you for sharing! We are hearing many reports of this.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Dec 23, 2024 Dec 23, 2024

Will not work with my computer, these are my results with this tool. Thanks

 

Versione di Adobe Photoshop: 26.2.0 20241207.r.140 bc85906 x64
Numero di avvii: 18
Sistema operativo: Windows 11 64 bit
Versione: 11 o versione successiva 10.0.26100.2605
Architettura di sistema: Famiglia CPU AMD:15, Modello:1, Stepping:2 con MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX2, AVX-512, HyperThreading
Conteggio processore fisico: 8
Conteggio processore logico: 16
Velocità processore: 3793 MHz
Memoria incorporata: 31894 MB
Memoria disponibile: 20444 MB
Memoria disponibile per Photoshop: 24491 MB
Memoria usata da Photoshop: 70 %
Gestione arresti anomali: Adobe
DCX Version: 7.24.8
SAM SDK Version: 9.1.0.1-fio
ACP.local Status:
- SDK Version: 4.0.0.5
- Core Sync Status: Reachable and compatible
- Core Sync Running: 7.2.0.58
- Min Core Sync Required: 4.3.66.28
Versione SDK Live Edit Client: 4.0.6
Adobe Firefly: utilizzate qualsiasi funzione di IA generativa per visualizzare la versione più recente.
OpenColorIO versione: 2.4.0
Versione libreria C2PA: adobe_c2pa/0.12.2 c2pa-rs/0.32.5
Versione NGL: 1.39.0.9
Lavagna: disattivato.
Creazione documento lavagna: disattivato.
Renderer D3D12Warp: disattivato.

 

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Dec 23, 2024 Dec 23, 2024

The tool failed to recognize reflections in glasses in a portrait. The Reflections checkbox was grayed out.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Dec 23, 2024 Dec 23, 2024

Did not work at all. Photo taken through an airplane window showing reflections of photographer's shirt. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Zero. The "processed" image was identical to the source image. Note to self: do not fall for large claims. They are usually going to be BS.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Dec 25, 2024 Dec 25, 2024

In my case just darkened the photo

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Adobe Employee ,
Dec 30, 2024 Dec 30, 2024

Please refer to this Blog post to understand how to get best results from the tool, and how we are working to improve it.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Dec 23, 2024 Dec 23, 2024

I'm trying to use the reflection removing tool on CR3 Format file and I get an error that this photo format is not supported.

as CR3 is cannon RAW format. why it doesn't work? 

 

Screenshot 2024-12-24 085517.png

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Contributor ,
Dec 28, 2024 Dec 28, 2024

That happens when you open the RAW file in Photoshop, then run the Camera RAW filter. You have to open it up in Camera RAW, not the filter version. I just drag and drop my Canon CR3 files directly onto Photoshop, which it then opens up correctly. Also, once you exit Camera RAW, you can only use the filter version, and won't get back any history of your changes, and can't run denoise or reflection removal. 

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Dec 24, 2024 Dec 24, 2024

Doesn't work on my Canon RAW CR2 files on my PC. Works on Sony ARW files??

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Dec 24, 2024 Dec 24, 2024

Here's a .nef file that was not helped much...

Thanks for working on this!

 

 

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Dec 24, 2024 Dec 24, 2024

Windows 10, Intel Core i7, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M,   Photoshop (Beta) 26.3.0, have .NEF file open in Camera Raw 17.1.0.2100. When I try to remove reflections it always fails with-    Unable to remove reflections. There was an unknown error.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Dec 24, 2024 Dec 24, 2024

Screenshot 2024-12-24 160539.png

 

Hi,i tried this but there is an error coms up as photo attached showup. 

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Adobe Employee ,
Dec 30, 2024 Dec 30, 2024

Please share your original RAW file. I have never seen anything like this, and do not believe that it is an output from the tool.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jan 07, 2025 Jan 07, 2025

Your image shows you used detect image. I don't check that box.

 

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Dec 24, 2024 Dec 24, 2024

Didn't do a clean job in removing all the reflections.  Only the brighter parts were removed, leaving portions of lighter reflections. Would be good if we can then select the remaining areas of reflections and redo the action to completely remove all reflections.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Adobe Employee ,
Dec 30, 2024 Dec 30, 2024

Please refer to this Blog post to understand how to get best results from the tool, and how we are working to improve it.

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Dec 25, 2024 Dec 25, 2024

I tried it but after Technology Preview has been selected the Reflecton Tool is always greyed out. I cannot use it

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines