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:

[Eric29489323q7t4]

Lightroom support is planned in the future (as mentioned in the blog). Light sources and other saturated regions create holes, and are therefore are better removed using various hole-filling tools, such as Generative Remove. After applying those tools to this example, I believe you can obtain a high quality end result.

[Pseudoryx]

Those are tools that I normally use. I just wanted to see how it performs on its own and was surprised to see how the light sources were treated inconsistently.

[Conrad_C]

Someone suggested somewhere that the feature is enabled if I choose the "Edit as Smart Object in Photoshop" option but that did not work either.

By Pseudoryx

If done properly, it will always work starting from Lightroom Classic. The tricky thing is that “Edit as Smart Object in Photoshop” is only half the answer. After it opens in Photoshop as a document containing the raw file as a Smart Object layer, you also have to make sure you edit the raw Smart Object in a way that acts on the actual raw data. 

Where a lot of people get tripped up (many examples in this thread) is trying to edit that raw smart object by choosing the command Filter > Camera Raw Filter, or by pressing its keyboard shortcut out of habit. This will never work for any features requiring raw data. That’s because the filter version of Camera Raw is a cut-down (features missing) version that doesn’t actually access the raw data, so currently raw-only features like reflection removal and Denoise will never appear if you use Camera Raw Filter. 

The right way to do it: In the Layers panel, double-click the raw Smart Object layer. That is a shortcut for the correct command to use, which is Layer > Smart Objects > Edit Contents. That command does use the full Camera Raw processor with all of its features.

If you put those two steps together, it will work from Lightroom Classic through Photoshop:

1. In Lightroom Classic, use “Edit as Smart Object in Photoshop” as you already did.

2. In Photoshop, double-click the raw Smart Object layer.

That’s all it takes, just those two steps.

[Pseudoryx]

Thank you. Still a lot more steps than I wanted but hopefully future Lightroom support will make it frictionless.

[David Franzen at Work]

For Windows users, if you observed the feature producing garbage output (noise/static, etc.) with Camera Raw 17.1, please update to Camera Raw 17.2 and try again. Version 17.2 includes a change that should improve compatability with some GPU on Windows.

If you have seem results like that on Mac, unfortunetly we have not yet been able to provide a fix in 17.2.

Thanks,
David

[L_Hankins]

I tried it a week ago with great results. Very impressed! I tried it again on the same photo (to show someone) and the -100 setting no longer shows the reflection, just a white screen. The +100 setting does a great job of removal. What happened to the -100 view?   

[Eric29489323q7t4]

Please share the source image so we can check if this a bug. 

[Jfiterman]

Hi,

This feature isn't working with raw files from the Fujifilm GFX 100S.  Please see image I've attached, or am I doing something wrong?  I'm on a Mac running macOS 14.7.4  3.6 Ghz 8-core i9 processor

[colmanc45976152]

jfiterman bonjour

Non, vous faites rien de mal. C'est Adobe qui n'a pas encore résolu tous les problèmes.

Je possède comme vous un FujiFilm GFX 100 et un Fujifilm GFX 100S II et un iMac macOS dernière mise à jour.
Il nous reste plus qu'à patience le bon vouloir de Adobe.

[Lucia28139084ixei]

02/23/2025, still doesen't work on MacBook 

[wleiphoto]

remove reflections did not pick up the airplane window reflection at all, maybe offer a manual selection option for the reflections?

[Eric29489323q7t4]

Thanks for your suggestion!

[Diego Espin]

My image has a complex pure reflection. The result of the image is not good yet.

reflection removal fail 

[Eric29489323q7t4]

This is an extremely challenging case because it's difficult for even me (a person) to understand, since I was not there. I wonder if you can use the strength slider to create a composite that achieves the result you want? 

[Brant_E]

I would love it if the reflections tool worked on glasses. I was hoping the reflection removal tool might be able to remove these reflections in my subject's glasses with just a click.  Tilted the glasses down and raised the octabox for the next few photos, but the expression on this photo is great. I can do some photoshop work, but boy, would a glasses reflection removal tool be amazing!

[Eric29489323q7t4]

We noted in our blog that this is planned in the future.