P: (Technology Preview) Reflection Removal (CR)

[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 non-raw photos (e.g., JPEGs or HEICs) will be added in a future 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 the 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:

[Szoltartheterrible]

The guidance states that it works with DNG files, however, reflection removal doesn't recognise DNG files created by the Adobe converter as being DNG files. They appear in the header as "filename.DNG     JPG" so perhaps the guidance needs to be updated.

[Erik Bloodaxe]

If your files appear as .DNG   JPG in the header then your files do not contain RAW data but JPEGs wrapped in a DNG container file. It is important to realise that not all DNG files contain RAW data and opening such files in Camera Raw will restrict the functions available. You can wrap JPEG files in a DNG container file but that does not convert them to true DNG files, which is impossible, they remain JPEGs. That is what the header is telling you.

[Szoltartheterrible]

I have seen that issue. The file name on my computer is "xxx.dng". But in
Camera RAW it appears as "xxx.dng. JPG" . The file was a jpg that I
converted to DNG using the Adobe DNG converter. Clearly the converter
modifies the Exif data or perhaps doesn't modify the Exif data so Camera
RAW still identifies the file as a jpg file.

[Erik Bloodaxe]

It is simply not possible to convert JPEG files to RAW images. As previously stated, you have wrapped your JPEG files in DNG containers. Yes, your operating system will show them as "xxx.dng" but that does not mean that they contain RAW data - they don't, they are still JPEG files.

I don't know how think you have managed to get Adobe DNG Converter to work with JPEG files as it requires RAW data otherwise an error is generated:

[Conrad_C]

Erik’s right. If a non-raw file format was converted to DNG, that doesn’t qualify. 

Maybe this means the current technical requirements are not stated specifically enough. What they definitely mean by “‘DNG” is either a DNG file that is the default raw format of a camera (as it is with many smartphones, and some pro camera models), or camera raw data directly converted to DNG. 

If a non-raw format was converted to DNG, then as Erik says it’s not really raw, just the same data in a DNG wrapper (similar to how a .MOV or .WMV video files are really wrappers for a variety of codecs that can be used in them). 

Once an image has been converted out of camera raw to a rendered format, it can’t be reverse converted back to real raw. This is even more true for JPEG because of its destructive lossy compression. 

If the only available original copies of these images are JPEG, then the solution in this case is to wait and see when Adobe can make this feature work with non-raw formats*, as they have publicly said they would like to do in the future. But non-raw formats are definitely not yet supported in this early Technology Preview version of the feature.

*In their blog post Removing window reflections in Adobe Camera Raw (also linked in the first post of this thread) Adobe said:

We're planning to support JPEGs, HEICs, and other non-raw files.

[Chapps-LA]

I'm really looking forward to this tool working with non-RAW format files. I've only started shooting RAW in the last couple of years (as I returned to photography after many years), so have a ton of JPEGs, HEICs, et al, that could really benefit from reflection removal. Even though I shoot RAW with my Canon, and even with my iPhone, I still snap an occasional shot in non-RAW with my iPhone, usually without thinking that it will be used and just as another reference photo. But if the RAW photo doesn't turn out, the non-RAW may be my only record. Crossing my fingers!

[colmanc45976152]

Avant de pouvoir s'occuper des autres formats non RAW; Adobe devrait s'occuper en priorité des fichiers RAW venus de tous les appareils photographiques, en locurence du FujiFilm GFX S II. 

Je signale aux non connaisseurs qu'un fichier RAW est incroyablement plus complexe qu'un fichier JPG. C'est la raison pour laquelle qu'un fichier RAW pèse beaucoup, beaucoup, beaucoup plus lourd qu'un fichier JPG. Donc, pour Adobe, quand tous les fichiers RAW seront correctement traités,  il sera beaucoup plus facile pour Adobe de s'occuper des fichiers JPG.

[Hugh Griffiths]

Absolute magic!

[thi_7491]

I was excited to try the feature so I took a photo today and tried out the new feature.  It works nice but did not remove 100% of the refletion.  Maybe because I took the photo at an angle.  I want to provide the photos so the developers can try to duplicate and improve the feature.  I am glad that Photoshop team develops new features.  Thanks.

[dianav52175196]

I did use the remove reflections and it worked great, it was reflection on glasses.

Now I wanted to do the same, it is almost the same picture, but now PS doesn't see any reflections anymore, plus I have to do now in smart layers what I didn't do the last time.

So it did work, but now it doesn't anymore !!

[colmanc45976152]

Bonjour

J'ai utilisé Wetransfer pour vous envoyer mon fichiers RAW et les captures d'écran

Voici le lien : https://we.tl/t-VuVJs8R9sW

J'espère que vous aurez analyser mes photos et me dire pourquoi Supprimer les Reflets ne fonctionne pas.

Meri d'avance

[Conrad_C]

Bonjour – I tried it on my Mac and it works fine. It looks like there is nothing wrong with your files, and it also means that Fuji camera is already supported.

However, because it looks scrambled on your Mac (Intel-based with AMD Radeon GPU) and OK on my Mac (Apple Silicon M1 GPU), I think this is a symptom of problems that this early version of reflection removal has with some types of graphics hardware. There are other posts here reporting this problem for certain Macs and PCs. Hopefully Adobe will be able to use your image to help them make it work with the AMD Radeon graphics hardware in your iMac.

How it looks on my Mac:

[colmanc45976152]

Mille Mercis Conrad C

Grace à vous, je sais à présent pourquoi je ne puis utiliser correctement l'outil "suppression des reflets".
Vivement que Adobe corrige cette erreur.

Je suis très satisfait de votre correction sur ma photographie.
Mille merci encore.

[colmanc45976152]

Je voudrais féliciter Adobe pour son outil "Super-résolution" dans Camera RAW.
Bravo Adobe

[Chapps-LA]

Yes, it's now looking like certain types of graphics hardware isn't - yet - compatible with this new tool. Given that this is really beta, I'm expecting issues like this to get fixed in the next few weeks to months. I'm upgrading to a new Mac Mini with the M4 Pro chip, so I'm crossing my fingers that there won't be any problems for me, since I've now grown dependent on reflection removal (most of my photography is in museums). I should add a couple more of my failed reflection removal attempts, since they're pretty instructive. I've also noticed that slightly changing the image before running the new tool can determine success or failure. But it's opaque as to the reason why. 

[Eric29489323q7t4]

Hi Chapps. I'm the lead researcher for the reflection removal feature. Since you are a heavy user of our tool, it would be great if you could continue to share examples of your successes and particularly the failures in RAW format. That would be most useful for testing purposes. 

[sabinek57953906]

The Tool does not work on my Windows-PC. I use only raw files (Canon *.CR2) and i get always the answer: not compatible!

[alh47]

My PC also shows this digital mess, quite pretty but utterly useless. It happens with every image.

[Chapps-LA]

Can you post your RAW file and describe your workflow? How are you opening the RAW file and applying the tool? Of course, it could just be one of the issues with graphics hardware that they're discovering. Not unusual with what's really a beta of this tool. But adding your specs to a description could help them support it in the future.

[juan_5613]

Hola, estoy probando la herramienta con una GPU intel HD graphics 620 con el controlador actualizado (19/07/22) en un windows 10 Home (22H2) y el proceso se para por un error inexperado y avisa de que la GPU se ha detenido por un error en tiempo de ejecucion.

[CalmLight]

When I open a .dng file in ACR, Reflections is grayed out in the Distraction Removal tool.

I'm using:

Photoshop v 26.2.0

ACR v 17.1.0.2100

My Computer:

Chip: Apple M1 Max, Type: GPU

macOS: Sequoia v 15.2

I have checked the box ✓ New AI Features and Settings Panel in Camera Raw Preferences.

[Sameer K]

Hey, @CalmLight. Welcome to the Camera Raw Community. I'll need more info to help you figure this out. 

Does this happen with a specific image or all images? Remove Reflection works only on raw photos (DNGs, CR2s, ARWs, ProRAWs, etc.) Non-linear or compressed DNG raw files may not work. 

Please share sample images & try with alternate images. 

Let me know how it goes. 
Thanks! 
Sameer K

(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

[PhotosbyFurskog]

@Sameer K 

Let me pitch in here as i was looking for an answer to this same question.

Funny thing is, the distraction removal tool worked with one picture and then suddenly it was greyed out on all the next pictures. Went back to the original of the first successful picture and the tool was greyed out. All pics are *.dng taken with my Fujifilm XT-5 and imported to Photoshop via Lightroom Classic

*Camera raw 17.2.0.2155

*Photoshop 26.3

*MacOs Sequoia 15.3.1

[PhotosbyFurskog]

I´m using the swedish version so Borttagning av distraktion = Distraction removal

[PhotosbyFurskog]

@Sameer K 

I figured it out somewhat and perhaps this is stated somewhere in the manual. The distraction removal tool won´t work if you previously removed distraction objects as cables in Photoshop.