Adobe Unveils AI-Powered Reflection Removal Tool for Photoshop

Reflection Ruining Your Photo? That's Why Adobe Made Its New AI Removal Tool

Katelyn is a writer with CNET covering social media, AI and online services. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in media and journalism. You can often find her with a novel and an iced coffee during her time off. Chances are you've taken a perfect photo, with great lighting and composition, that was completely ruined by a reflection. I've certainly had many museum and aquarium shots ruined by the reflection of me holding up my phone, obscuring the painting or sea turtle I'm trying to capture. That's why Adobe's newest editing feature uses AI to make it easier to remove reflections. Reflection removal was announced last week as a brand new feature in the Camera Raw plugin for Photoshop. "Our goal is to help you turn a photo you might otherwise delete into one that is good enough to share," Marc Levoy, Adobe vice president and fellow, said in a blog post. In an exclusive interview with CNET, Levoy walked us through how the tool works, why the team didn't use generative AI and what comes next. Although Levoy has only been at Adobe since 2020, he's a powerhouse in the world of digital photography. His work as a Stanford University researcher helped pioneer computational photography and the digital process of capturing and processing images and graphics. He helped lead Google's respected Pixel camera app team and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Since joining Adobe, Levoy's worked on a variety of projects with photography and AI, including launching a camera app for Adobe, the now-discontinued Photoshop Camera. In an interview with CNET in 2022 discussing Levoy's vision for the app, he specifically called out how much he'd love to ship a tool to deal with reflections. While much of the tech in the camera app has since found a new home in Adobe Express, the one-click reflection removal tech Levoy imagined in 2022 is now a reality in Camera Raw. A big part of how the tool works is thanks to AI. However, the feature does not use generative AI, so it doesn't create new elements or regions in an image. Photographs with reflections are like the sum of two different images, Levoy explained. The job of reflection removal -- and the AI model behind it -- is to distinguish the two. "Removing window reflections comes down to separating a photo that is polluted by reflections into a transmission image (the scene through the window) and a reflection image (the scene behind the photographer). A separation task is very different from a generation task and calls for a different kind of AI model," said Levoy. Levoy and his team, Eric Kee and Adam Pikielny, trained the model using pairs of clean and reflection-riddled images to create new images that combined the original image with a reflection. The model then had to correctly identify what the original images were, teaching it to separate the intended subjects from accidental reflections. The removal tool is now adept at isolating the different images, meaning creators don't need to edit out reflections with generative AI. "There's no reason to use generative AI on those sections where both the transmission and reflection scenes are partly visible," said Levoy. For generative-AI-wary photographers, this is good news. Adobe has spent a lot of time and money upgrading its photo and video editing to incorporate AI. AI took center stage at the company's annual creative conference this year, where generative AI was powering everything from smoother video transitions to completely relighting dark photos. There might be cases when Adobe's generative AI editing tools could help with photos where the reflections are so bright it saturates the camera sensor to white. But reflection removal offers photographers a non-generative way to quickly deal with those distractions. Reflection removal currently works with raw images and is available as a beta technology preview (meaning it's available now, but it's still being actively worked on). In the future, Adobe plans to expand the AI tool to be compatible with other image file types, like JPEGs and HEICs, and refine the tool to remove smaller reflections. It also plans to introduce the tool to its Lightroom ecosystem, something Levoy is especially jazzed about. "I can't wait until this feature is available in Lightroom Mobile," said Levoy. "I want to go to the aquarium, take a photo of the shark tank that is polluted by reflections, click a button and admire the resulting clean photo, while the people around me stare in disbelief at the image on my phone. I'll smile and tell them how to download the feature to their own phone."

Photoshop gets the next big thing in AI photography - a tool that makes unwanted reflections vanish

The next big AI photography trick is removing pesky window reflections from our photos - and Adobe has seemingly cracked it with a new feature that's available in beta now for Adobe Bridge, Photoshop and soon Lightroom. The sensibly-named 'Reflection Removal' tool can instantly remove reflections from photos you've shot through the windows of homes, vehicles, shops or airplanes. And best of all, it doesn't do it in an overly artificial way using generative AI. Instead, Adobe says the 'Reflection Removal' model has been trained using millions of simulated photographs that task it with separating an underlying photo from a reflection. By rewarding the correct answers, the tool learns how to separate the 'real' photo from the reflection and allow you to fix it accordingly. Right now, the tool only works on raw photos - so that's the uncompressed files taken on your camera (like DNGs or CR2s) or the likes of ProRaw from iPhones. And it's currently only a "technology preview" for Adobe Bridge and Photoshop, with Lightroom support "coming soon". But it's clearly something that could ultimately become a built-in feature on the best camera phones. And it's the latest AI tool that automates something that professionals have long battled with, in this case either by using pricey polarizing filters or advanced editing techniques. To take 'Reflection Removal' for a spin, open Photoshop's Camera Raw plug-in (which pops up when you open a raw file in the app), then go to the Settings cog > Technology Previews, and check the 'New AI Settings and Features' box. Once you restart Photoshop or Adobe Bridge, head to the Remove panel (which is the eraser symbol on the right) and in the Distraction Removal section check the 'Reflections' box. After a few seconds, you'll see an estimation of what the final image will look like with the reflections removed, but you can also tweak the strength of the effect. By default, the slider will be set to 100, but like most Adobe sliders, you'll likely be best going for something more subtle by moving the slider to the left. Adobe admits that the best fix for this photography problem is to avoid reflections in the first place, rather than using its experimental tool. For example, when taking photos through a window, you want to press the lens as close to the glass as possible (photographers also use a 'lens skirt' to help with this). The 'Reflection Removal' tool does also have a few weaknesses. It doesn't currently work very well with cityscapes at night, and it might end up removing some reflections that you actually want in the photo. That's why Adobe's included the slider to adjust the strength of the effect. But considering how complex removing reflections from photos is, the tool is a solid first step and something I'd consider using in the editing process. Some aspects of the photo may end looking artificial, but Adobe isn't relying on generative AI to 'guess' at what should be in the photo - and it could ultimately rescue shots that would otherwise head straight to the trash can. The technique will also clearly become much more user-friendly and approachable. Adobe says it's "planning to support JPEGs, HEICs, and other non-raw files" and I can see the tool, albeit in less powerful form, arriving natively on Pixel phones, Android and iOS, with Google and Apple presumably looking on with interest. Interestingly, Adobe also says it wants to "extend our tool to the removal of dust, scratches, rain, snow, or other things that land on windows", like bugs on windshields. It isn't clear how that differs from existing object removal tools, but the problem may ultimately become - how sanitized and perfect do we want our photos to become? For those who have long struggled with photo-ruining reflections, that'll be a nice dilemma to have.

Adobe's New Reflection Removal Tool Aims to Save Your Travel Photos

Removing reflections from photos takes time and effort. Adobe's talented engineers are working to solve the issue once and for all in a single click. Polarizing filters are an effective way to reduce or entirely remove reflections from objects like glass windows. However, not every photographer wants to carry a filter around with them all the time, so what can be done after the image is already captured? Historically, not much. Removing window reflections manually in image editing tools is tedious and woefully ineffective. However, armed with artificial intelligence, Adobe Camera Raw's latest update solves this issue, rescuing countless shots. AI remains a contentious topic among photographers for very good reasons. However, AI has the potential to save photographers significant time without wresting away creative control. Some recent features in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom have maintained a nice balance here, including AI-powered masking, lens blur, and Generative Expand. Not every tool has hit the mark, but the new Reflection Removal one offers significant promise. "Reflections are sometimes useful. For example, they help you distinguish between different materials. However, reflections that show recognizable objects are typically unwanted and get in the way of photography," Adobe explains in a new blog post. "Indeed, we often give up taking a unique photo that we expect will be ruined by a reflection. So while few of the photos in our collections might contain unwanted reflections, this is mainly because we passed up many creative opportunities." Common examples of times reflections have a ruinous impact on photography include photographing landscapes through airplane windows, capturing travel photos at museums (that allow photography, of course), and maybe even capturing photos of animals at a zoo or wildlife rehab center. Windows and glass objects are everywhere, so there are countless times a photographer must contend with reflections. However, sometimes reflections are themselves part of an image's appeal. Few want to remove reflections of the sky from a lake, for example. Removing tiny reflections is rarely tricky to do manually. So, Reflection Removal is explicitly designed to deal with unintended, unwanted reflections that dramatically impact the look of the image. At least for now, more minor reflections are in the team's sights for future iterations. It's a complicated problem to solve, though. As Adobe explains, a photograph "polluted by a reflection" is really the combination of two images. There is the scene the shooter wanted to capture, and then there is the second image, a reflected view of the scene behind the camera. The trick to removing a reflection from a photo is to disentangle these two different photos in a single frame. Adding noise to the issue is that reflections are not perfect. Glass is often dirty or smudged, interacts differently with light than the scene behind the glass, and usually has different degrees of focus and varying white balance. "Also, in photos that contain reflections, if two edges cross, like the edges of the turntable and the legs of the photographer, it's probably due to a superimposed reflection, because the edges of opaque objects don't cross in nature," Adobe adds. Adobe trained its new Reflection Removal system using thousands of photos of different subjects without reflections. The team then combined pairs of these training images to simulate photographs with reflections. Since the team knew the ground truth of each picture, it could correct the model along the way, helping it improve over time. "By repeating this training process over many examples, the model learns how to separate the two images in a photograph that is polluted by reflections," writes Adobe. As for the tool's efficacy, it remains a work in progress. However, Adobe's examples are impressive. Once the model finishes its work, the user can control how much a reflection is removed from the scene, from zero (no removal) to 100 (complete removal). "Sometimes our model mixes up the scene behind the window and the reflected scene -- that's why we give you a two-ended slider," Adobe says. "But because our model is not generative AI, it will never create objects that weren't present in the original photograph." Although this new tool is impressive, Adobe says the "best way to remove reflections from a photograph is to avoid them in the first place." But for times when that's impossible, Reflection Removal shows promise. For now, Reflection Removal only works with RAW photos, although JPEG, HEIC, and other non-RAW image support are planned. It is now available as a Technology Preview with Adobe Camera Raw, and the team anticipates bringing an expanded version to the entire Lightroom ecosystem in the future. Reflection Removal is developed by Eric Kee and Adam Pikielny, with help from Jiawen Chen, Lars Jebe, Durga Ganesh Grandhi, Eric Chan, Thomas Knoll, Simon Chen, Frieder Gans, and Kevin Matzen. "We believe our technology is the best-performing feature of its kind," Adobe says. "So we're excited to see what you do with it!"

Adobe's new Photoshop tool can clean away window reflections

Adobe has for removing window reflections from photos. The feature was originally announced at Adobe Max 2023 as and is available to preview in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Bridge right now if you're a Creative Cloud subscriber, with Adobe Lightroom support coming soon. If you've ever taken a photo of something through a shop window, you've likely dealt with your own reflection or a variety of light streaks and distortions ruining the image. Adobe's Reflection Removal tool (as Project See Through is referred to now) is designed to make those reflections a lot easier to remove. The tool uses AI that can isolate two separate images: the reflection and whatever is on the other side of the window or reflective material. The training data Adobe used to teach its AI was built from thousands of reflection-free photos that were combined in pairs to create composite images with simulated reflections. The AI model was given the task of determining what two original images the composite was made from, which Adobe engineers could then reward or penalize until the model's accuracy improved. The final product works best with reflections that take up the entire field of view of the image. Specifically, Adobe says the Reflection Removal tool can't handle "reflections from windows that are small or far away" or reflections from "wine glasses, car bodies, or clouds reflected in a lake." Engadget was able to test the feature on a reflection in a pair of and came to a similar conclusion. Adobe's tool was able to make the lenses of the sunglasses oddly clearer, revealing some of the background behind them, but not remove the reflection entirely. If you want to try the feature for yourself, Adobe says you can go to the Preferences Panel in the Camera RAW plug-in, enable the "New AI Settings and Features Panel," and then restart whatever app you're accessing the plug-in from. Once you've uploaded a photo, the Reflection Removal tool will be in the Remove panel under the Distraction Removal section. Reflection Removal is just one small example of how Adobe has been trying to integrate AI into its suite of creative apps in the last few years. The company has been putting most of its attention towards generative AI, first with 's image generation capabilities, and more recently in October 2024, .

Photoshop's New AI Tool Makes Removing Window Glare a Breeze

6 of My Favorite Creative Design Trends From 2024: What Should We Expect in 2025? While there are plenty of ways to create and edit images using AI, I'd argue that removing undesirable elements is its most useful application. It saves you a ton of time and allows people who struggle with image editing to perform advanced techniques with very little intervention. Now, Adobe has revealed a new AI tool that can remove pesky reflections from your photos. Adobe Camera Raw Receives a New Reflection Removal Tool As announced on the Adobe Blog, the Camera Raw tool is getting a new AI-powered tool to remove reflections from your photos. If you've taken a photo of something through a window and you want to get rid of any reflections spoiling your image, you can use this tool to automatically scrub away unwanted parts, leaving the photo subject clear and pristine. Adobe breaks down how this technology works in its blog, and it's pretty fascinating. The AI tool is trained to recognize an image with a reflection as two separate images: the photo subject and the scene reflected off the glass. By separating these two images, the AI could generate what the original subject would look like without reflections and what the reflected scene looked like. It works so well that Adobe is thinking of making more removal tools like it: We'd also like to extend our tool to the removal of dust, scratches, rain, snow, or other things that land on windows (bugs on windshields?) To use this tool, open a raw photo in an Adobe image editing app like Photoshop, then activate the Camera Raw extension. If this is the first time you've heard of this tool, check out how to work with Camera Raw so you know how to work it. Go to the Technology Previews section in Preferences, enable the New AI Settings and Features panel, then restart the app. Import a photo, go to the Remove panel, access the Distraction Removal section, and check the box labeled "Reflections." It should now scrub your image of reflections.

I saw the magical Reflection Removal tool teased at Adobe Max - and it's now reached Photoshop

I was at Adobe Max LA in 2023 when they revealed Photoshop's new Reflection Removal tool as a Sneak, though at the time it was called Project See Through . Provoking genuine gasps from the audience, it's one of the most useful tools I've seen during one of these events, because it could actually be essential in your everyday workflow. Often these Sneaks are best for creatives using specialist techniques, but this is one that will delight even the most basic user. Just imagine how often pesky reflections get in the way of your incredible photography. (See more Adobe AI magic in the best Photoshop tutorials). But how does it work? The AI can tell the difference between the two parts of the photo by judging the colour and sharpness. It can then isolate and remove the unwanted elements. It won't work on anything very badly damaged by reflection - it works in the same way as a person viewing the picture. If you can't unscramble what you're looking at then neither can the AI. Currently just available on RAW files, it will soon also be coming to JPGs and HEICs, you can access the tool by opening the Camera RAW tool and going to the Technology Preview panel. There you'll find the New AI Settings and Features Panel. Finally, restart Photoshop or Bridge. When you open a RAW file you'll have the option to use a slider to adjust how clearly you can see the reflection on the image.

Adobe's Camera Raw Tool Can Now Use AI to Remove Glass Reflections

It is currently in the Technology Preview phase for user feedback Adobe is rolling out a new feature for its Camera Raw plugin which makes it easier to remove reflections from glass surfaces, the company announced on Thursday. The tool, dubbed Reflection Removal, leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and works for window reflections in images. It is currently available in Technology Preview to get feedback from the community, as per the company. Notably, Adobe is also releasing an adaptive profile for monochrome in public beta in Adobe Camera Raw. In a blog post, Adobe detailed the workings of its new Reflection Removal feature. Glass reflections generally tend to occur when an image is shot through a window. While this isn't ideal, sometimes it is the only way to capture unmissable moments, such as the Northern Lights during a transatlantic flight. Adobe says that its new AI tool is designed to be used in such situations. It works by separating the two images captured with different content, such as white balance and sharpness of focus. The feature also detects if there is a superimposed reflection between them. The AI model used by the Reflection Removal tool then untangles these images. The AI model is trained on thousands of images of various subjects without any reflections, as per Adobe. Pairs of images are then added together to simulate more examples, but this time to form images polluted by reflections. The results are fed into the AI model which is then asked to predict the original photos, with correct answers being rewarded. This process is repeated with various examples to train it. At the moment, the Reflection Removal feature works only for raw images with support for the following formats supported -- DNGs, CR2s, ARWs, and ProRAWs. It can be used with the Camera Raw plug-in in the Technology Previews section of the Preferences Panel. While only available via Camera Raw, the company says it will also be rolled out to Adobe Lightroom soon.