Remove Reflections in Photoshop - A Year Later - Has It Improved?

JUST OVER a year ago, I wrote about this Photoshop tool, and concluded that for the most part, it was "not ready for prime time yet." In fairness, I also concluded that it was a pretty good tool in many cases to create a starting point, with the additional need to "work" the image afterward. Many of Photoshop's AI and content - aware tools share this issue. There is usually going to be some additional "cleanup" necessary after applying the tool.

IN 2025, a new feature was added to the "Remove" tool in Photoshop's Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) module, to remove reflections. In a blog post in May, 2025, I reviewed that feature. The recently released Photoshop ver. 27.6.0 now includes that "tool" in the main Photoshop program under the Edit Menu labeled "Reflection Removal." The reflection removal in ACR has also been maintained. In ACR, you will be working with raw images and thus generally higher resolution files, making your renders potentially higher quality. The Remove Reflections tool in Photoshop, however, can only be used on 8-bit images. If you don't convert the image to 8-bit, "Remove Reflections" will be greyed out.

USING THE tool in Photoshop (instead of ACR) gives slightly more flexibility and perhaps creativity, but at the expense of image quality. In Photoshop, the tool provides for the use of layers, allowing a layer of just the reflection, which can be adjusted for opacity and also used for creative purposes. When you activate Remove Reflections, it will give you a separate dialog box asking if you want to create a new (reflection) layer. I would do so, just to give yourself that additional flexibility in processing.

HAS THIS utility changed? Most certainly. But has it improved? Lets take a look. The first image below is the original, unretouched image made through the plexiglass up in London's "Shard" skyscraper.

The Thames from "The Shard" - London, England
Copyright Andy Richards 2021 - All Rights Reserved

THE SECOND shot below is the identical image, but with the "Reflections" utility under ACR's Remove Distractions applied using the highest quality. A comparison with the same image using the same adjustments in the prior blog post show that there have not been any improvements made to this tool from the 2025 version. They are virtuallly identical. While some of the high level reflections have been removed, the streaks across the river are still visible.

The Thames from "The Shard" - London, England
Copyright Andy Richards 2021 - All Rights Reserved

THE NEXT image below is the unretouched image brought into Photoshop and after conversion to 8-bits, the new "Remove Reflections" tool under the Edit menu applied. It seems like for this example there is an ever-so-slight improvement, but the tradeoff will be that on larger file applications, it is perhaps made is less effective by requiring that the image be converted to 8-Bit).

The Thames from "The Shard" - London, England
Copyright Andy Richards 2021 - All Rights Reserved

IN THE last image, I applied the ACR reflection removal, and then in Photoshop, converted to 8-bit and applied the new Reflection Removal under the Edit Menu on top of the prior removal process. If anything, in this instance, it looks worse to me, suggesting that they two algorithyms will likely work against each other.

The Thames from "The Shard" - London, England

Copyright Andy Richards 2021 - All Rights Reserved

I NEXT tried just the new Edit Menu "Reflections Removal" tool on another image from the prior blog, showing my own reflection in the window. Similar to the prior result, it did nothing. Doesn't appear to recognize my image as a reflection. That is probably a factor of high contrast that might be better treated if there was a bright, specular reflection.

Window Reflection of Photographer - London, England

Copyright Andy Richards 2021 - All Rights Reserved

CONCLUSION? THEY have added some "bells and whistles," making it usable in PS itself, with layers, but only on 8-bit files. I cannot see any improvement in its effectiveness. For me, it will remain a relatively little used tool (in reality, try not to create such reflections unless I am doing them on purpose), but one that may have some limited utility as part of a more thorough processing session.