Updated Reflection Removal, But is it BETTER?

On the 29th September Adobe released Lightroom 9.6 and Lightroom Classic 15.6, and one of the things in the update was a set of improvements to reflection removal. Adobe's wording talks about cleaner results on complex surfaces, with fewer smudges and ghosting artefacts when you're removing reflections from windows, glass and water, which sounds great, but I think it's fair to say my experience of it up until now has been a little bit hit and miss. When it works it works incredibly well, but there are pictures where you'd think it should do the job and it just doesn't.

So I wanted to see how the update copes, and then show you something else that's now in Lightroom which could be a workaround for the times it doesn't. I haven't tried it on water yet; I wanted to see how it got on with ordinary reflections in windows first.

Where it works

The first picture I tried is one where the window is the dominant part of the scene, with me clearly reflected in the glass. In the Remove section on the right-hand side you've got Reflections, so I ticked Apply, using Preview so I wasn't waiting around too long, and after a few seconds it had done a really good job. Drag the Amount slider all the way to the left and you can see the reflection, drag it all the way to the right and it's gone completely.

That's the version of this tool people get excited about, and rightly so.

Where it doesn't

The next picture is me standing outside a gallery photographing it, and again I'm very clearly visible in the window along with plenty of other things being reflected. Same steps, same few seconds' wait, and nothing really happened, which is odd, because the window is still the main part of the picture.

The third was outside my friend Nicola Catherine's fashion knitwear and art studio, with me reflected in the window again. This time it looked really good at first, until you start looking properly; around the picture frame and up towards the top you can still see the reflection, and with the Amount slider dragged across I could still make out my teeth, my beard and my glasses.

That's where the tool is right now, and I'd fully expect it to keep getting better. The question is what you do in the meantime when it won't play ball.

Prompt to Edit

I've previously done this in Photoshop with a selection and Generative Fill, but there's another new addition in Lightroom which I think works as a workaround for now. Down at the bottom of the right-hand panel there's a small icon for Prompt to Edit. My first thought when I saw it was that I didn't really want that kind of thing in Lightroom, but Lightroom has a lot of users with different wants and needs, and it'll suit plenty of them. It's early access at the moment, so this isn't the finished version.

It works the way prompting does in any generative AI tool. There are presets for things like fixing dust and scratches, colour restoration and black and white colourisation, plus effects such as adding dense fog or replacing the sky, and you can type your own prompt and pick earlier ones from a history list underneath. The important part is the note at the top saying the result is saved as a new DNG, because what it's actually doing is regenerating the entire image to make whatever change you've asked for.

Right now the only models on offer are Nano Banana 2 at 2K, which uses 20 credits, or Nano Banana 2 at 4K, which uses 30, and there's no preview, so you don't get to see whether it's going to work before the credits are spent. I'd really hope more models appear once it's out of early access, because there are others that are better at working on just part of an image while holding on to the original.

Trying it on three windows

The picture I used has three windows with some pretty severe reflections, and the big white patch in the right-hand one is my softbox from when I lit the portrait. I typed "remove the reflections from each of the three windows", hit Generate, and after a short wait a second file appeared next to the original Fuji raw file, with "-prompt" added to the file name.

The reflections were gone, but flicking between the two with the arrow keys the saturation had clearly gone up, and in the right-hand window, where you couldn't see anything at all through the softbox, it had simply made something up. For your own pictures that might be fine, but if you're trying to keep any integrity in the image I don't imagine a client would be too keen.

So I deleted that one and tried again, adding "do not change the colour, do not increase the contrast, keep the original contents exactly the same" to the prompt and choosing 4K this time. The windows came out really well, but the saturation was still up, and zooming in showed the bigger issue; even at 4K it's a much lower resolution than the original photograph, and a lot of the lettering had changed. The menu was nonsense and the Costa sign now said "burned", which isn't the best advert if you're selling coffee.

Bringing it into Photoshop

However, all is not lost, because you only need the generated file for the glass. I selected the original and the new DNG in Lightroom, holding Shift to get both, then went to File, Edit In, Open as Layers in Photoshop.

In the Layers panel the difference in size between the two thumbnails is obvious straight away, which is a very visual way of seeing how much resolution you lose. With the generated layer on top, I selected both layers and went to Edit, Auto-Align Layers, left it on Auto and clicked OK, and it lined the two up really well. A quick crop took care of the edges, along with a little bit of the softbox showing in the top right corner.

Then I held Option (Alt on Windows) and clicked the layer mask icon, which adds a black mask and hides the generated layer completely, and painted the windows back in with a white brush. I nudged the brush hardness up so it stayed tidy against the window frames, because a very soft brush spills over them.

This is where you get to choose what you keep. One sign had changed colour, so I left the original there. The wording at the top of the TripAdvisor sign had gone a bit odd, so I painted that back with black. The menu had turned into a strange made-up language, so I kept the original there too; there's still a touch of reflection on it, but it's not dominant. In the left-hand window a chalkboard had vanished while a hanging decoration had been kept, which is pretty clever, but it's artistic licence, and the right-hand window is completely invented. That's usable for your own work, but for a client I very much doubt they'd want new things appearing behind the glass.

Fixing the Costa sign

The Costa sign was a different problem, because masking couldn't sort it without the colour shifting, so the wording itself needed changing. I added a new blank layer, drew a selection around the word with the Rectangular Marquee tool and used Generative Fill from the contextual taskbar with Firefly Image 5, which is the one to pick here; it's designed to edit while preserving detail. I typed "change to served", and it swapped the word over in what looks like the same font, which is really useful.

The finished picture is the full resolution original everywhere except the glass, which comes from the regenerated file, and flicking between before and after it's not bad at all. Ideally you'd do all of this with Reflection Removal inside Lightroom, and I'm sure that's where it's heading, but as things stand in October 2026, with Prompt to Edit in early access and reflection removal still a bit hit and miss, it's another good option to have for the pictures the built-in tool can't manage yet.

Are we thinking WRONG about AI Editing?

My last two videos had ChatGPT editing my photographs, first in Lightroom, where it went through a folder of my own edited pictures, worked out my style and then edited a raw file the way I would, and then in Photoshop, where it used Photoshop's own tools to remove a colour cast, add a long exposure effect to a sky and do a cutout, hair included.

In both of them it didn't generate a new picture. It moved the same sliders and used the same tools that you and I would, and every one of those adjustments was still there to change afterwards.

The comments on those videos have been brilliant and they've really made me think, but one kept coming up in different words, and the gist of it was this: so now every picture is going to look like yours.

When you watch what ChatGPT is doing in those videos, it's an understandable thing to think. I just don't think it's right, so rather than argue about it, I decided to test it, and the video above is the result.

Putting it to the test

I gave ChatGPT a folder of my portraits, with my edits on them, and asked it to work out how I edit. Then I gave it the raw file of a portrait I'd already edited myself and asked it to edit that in my style.

I'm not going to go through what I did to mine; the two results are side by side in the video, so have a look and see if you can tell which is which before I give it away.

Here's the thing, though. Whichever one you prefer, they both look like one of my portraits, and that's not because of the edit, it's because I took the picture. Everything that makes it look like one of mine happened before the shutter was pressed, and ChatGPT had none of that to work with; it just had my raw file.

The edit is the icing on the cake

The edit is the part of the process we can see on screen, so it's easy to think that's what makes a picture yours, but it's only one part of a much bigger process. I really enjoy editing, and it gives a picture its final look, but for me it's the icing on the cake.

The big part is what goes on between my ears: how I think about a picture before I take it and how I compose it. With a portrait, it's how the person looks in front of the camera and whether they're relaxed or not. With a seascape, it's what goes in the frame and what doesn't.

None of that is in the edit, so even if somebody had the exact colouring, contrast and tonality I use, their pictures still wouldn't look like mine. They'd look like theirs, with my colouring on them.

We can all buy the same kit, spend the same money on the same camera and lens, stand in exactly the same spot and point it at the same thing, and the pictures still won't look the same. There'll be something in each one that's uniquely yours, because of what you like and what you don't, how you were brought up and everything you've looked at over the years. All of that goes into a photograph, and none of it comes out of an edit.

An opinion, or a misunderstanding?

People have their own opinions about AI, and that's a good thing; having an opinion is part of being human, not something artificial. Sometimes an opinion just isn't right, though, and I know that sounds a strange thing to say. The idea that everybody's pictures are going to end up looking the same isn't really an opinion at all. It's a misunderstanding of what photography is.

Using the software, not replacing the picture

That's also why the way ChatGPT did those edits interests me so much. There's a difference between asking an AI to generate a new version of your picture and having it use the same software you and I would. When a picture's generated, you hand it over and get a new one back. When the AI works the sliders and the masks itself, you get your own raw file back at full quality, with every adjustment still there to change.

It's a bit like the difference between someone redrawing your picture and someone sitting next to you showing you what they did with it. Both have their place, but they're very different things.

Two very different photographers

Where it gets interesting is who all of this is for, because there are definitely two different audiences. Take Adobe as an example. On one side they've got working photographers, people with clients and deadlines, editing a shoot with hundreds of pictures that all need the same look. On the other they've got enthusiasts, people who take pictures because they just love doing it.

For the working photographer, imagine being able to hand an AI an actual part of your process. I don't mean something that makes a new picture; I mean something that applies the same look to a whole set of images inside the software, moving the sliders and making the masks without touching the originals, so you can go in and change whatever you want afterwards. That could be a massive time saver.

The hobbyist is a different story, because for them editing isn't a job to get through. They go out and take their pictures because they enjoy it, then come home and edit them with no rush at all, sitting in a room with a bit of music on and maybe a nice glass of something. For them the editing is part of the thing they love, and a one-click fix isn't for them.

However, some of what AI brings is. The Remove Tool in Photoshop has been a massive benefit; jobs that used to take an age now take moments. Anything that helps with selections, hair and fine cutouts especially, is going to be a huge help as well. None of that takes the enjoyment away. It takes away the tedious bits and leaves more time for the parts you actually enjoy.

How I use it

I use AI every single day, for the admin, the research and the writing that goes with running everything on my own. I'm a one-man band, so that's a lot of work it takes off my desk, and I'm not worried in the slightest that other people's pictures are going to look like mine.

What it gives me is time, and that matters to me more than anything, because I absolutely love doing what I do. I got into this creative world because I love being creative, and I love the freedom of it and the escapism it gives me. I don't want anything to replace that. If anything I want more of it, which is exactly how I'm using AI; it takes care of the jobs I'd rather not be doing and gives me back more time with a camera in my hand.

The mood of the moment

When I gave ChatGPT my Lightroom and Photoshop to use, it didn't edit my pictures exactly the way I would. It can pick up the things I tend to do, but when I'm editing I'm very much in the mood of the moment, chopping and changing as I go, and that freedom of just going with it is a big part of why I enjoy editing at all. AI doesn't know the mood or the feeling I want to give a particular picture, and creating that is what I've always loved.

The Photoshop side was different, because those were tasks. The colour cast, the sky and the hair cutout were jobs where I knew what the finished result needed to be, and what I found really interesting was the thought of handing those kinds of tasks to an AI to do by hand, using the software the same way I would, so I've got more time for the creative side. It was an experiment, but it's certainly one that's got me thinking.

I Let ChatGPT Edit My Photos in Lightroom

The photograph in the video above was edited from start to finish in Lightroom, and I didn't make a single one of the adjustments. ChatGPT did. It used my Lightroom, moved the sliders, made the masks and took the picture from a slightly underexposed raw file to a finished edit, in my style.

ChatGPT has been able to use your computer for a while now. You give it permission and it takes over the mouse and keyboard and works through a job the way you would, opening apps, clicking and typing, and you can see everything it does as it does it and stop it at any point. With the recent update to Astra it's taken a real step up, which got me wondering whether it could actually edit a photograph. I don't mean generate a new picture; I mean sit inside Lightroom and edit a raw file with the same tools I use, and learn to do it the way I would.

Teaching it my style

The first job was getting it to understand how I edit. In Lightroom I set up an album called My Seascape Style with 11 of my images in it. Some still have their adjustments visible, masks included, so it could see exactly what I'd done. Others have the edit baked in, because I'd sent them over to Photoshop for some heavy lifting and brought them back, so there's nothing in the panels to look at, only the finished picture.

I used GPT-6 Astra with the effort level set to high. Day to day I find medium is plenty, but for studying my edits I wanted it to do an extra good job, even though it takes longer.

Then I told it what I wanted, dictated rather than typed because it's quicker. Look at every image in the album, study the adjustments, the masking, the detail and the colour grading, and try to understand not only what I'd done but why. For the images with nothing visible in the panels, study the mood and the atmosphere and the tonality instead, and work out what I'd have done to get there.

As soon as I sent it, ChatGPT asked for permission to use Adobe Lightroom, and I allowed it for that conversation. From then on you can watch it working away on its own, opening images and panels and looking around.

Watching it work

What really interested me was how far it went. It dived into the masking and looked at how I'd masked the rocks in the foreground and the adjustments I'd used to bring them out, which is exactly the kind of fiddly detail I'd half expected it to skip.

It posts updates as it goes, and part way through it had noticed that I recover the highlights and open up the shadows, then bring the depth back with control over the black point and selective detail. It had even picked up that I use one film-style profile for the warmer, pastel pictures and a different one for the cooler surf shots.

The whole thing took 11 minutes and 30 seconds. At the end it said it had reviewed the adjustments across all 11 images, including 27 local masks, saved an image-by-image reference of my style, and, thankfully, left my images unchanged.

Handing it a raw file

For the edit itself I picked an unedited raw file from the Local tab in Lightroom, a seascape that was slightly underexposed, which felt like a fair test. I told it to edit the image in my style using everything available in Lightroom, including the masking, the colour grading and denoise, then sat back with my arms folded to prove I wasn't touching anything.

When it finished, it described what it had done as my pastel seascape treatment: pink and lavender grading, cool water, deep textured rocks and luminous foam. The edit included four separate masks, denoise, selective sharpening, a custom tone curve, subtle grain and a vignette, plus a horizon correction.

What it actually did

Going through the Edit panel, it had chosen a profile and made adjustments right through the Light section. In the curve it had done one of the things I love to do, which is lift the blacks so they aren't a deep zero black, and it did that on a point curve. It used the colour mixer, and in the colour grading it worked on the shadows and midtones as well as the blending and balance. It used denoise too, and it built all those masks.

Hand on heart, that's pretty much how I would have edited it. I wouldn't leave it exactly as it is, I'd go in and tweak a few things, but it got me about 90% of the way there in roughly 10 minutes.

Try it with your own photos

If you'd like to give this a go, the detailed prompt I used is free to download. Head over to the classroom in my free Photography Community on Skool and you'll find it under YouTube download files:

https://www.skool.com/photography-community/about

Where this leaves us

There's been a lot of resistance to letting AI edit our photographs, and for good reason. When it generates the picture for you the quality drops, at the moment anyway, and you can't go back in and adjust what it's done. This is very different; it's using my software to make the same manual adjustments I'd make to my own raw files, at full quality, and every one of them can still be changed.

It's not something I'd do myself, because editing is a big part of how I make a picture mine and I just love the process. However, if you're new to editing and don't know where to start, or you know what you want but not how to get there, this is a bit like having someone who's really good with Lightroom sit next to you and show you what they'd do. You can watch every move it makes and undo any of them, and I think there's real potential in that as a way of learning.

Reflection Removal NOT WORKING in Lightroom? Try this

The Reflection Removal tool in Lightroom and Camera Raw is a brilliant addition, but it does have its limits at the moment, and that comes down to the way it's been designed. As things stand it's built for windows that are the dominant part of the picture, so if the glass you're working on is only a small part of the frame, you can hit apply, watch the bar do its thing, and end up with an image that looks exactly the same as it did before.

Someone in my photography community got in touch about this. He had a raw file of a cabinet indoors, he'd followed all the usual steps, and the reflections just wouldn’t shift.

However, there's a good reason for that, and there's a simple way round it.

Why it ignores some reflections

Reflection Removal sits under Distraction Removal, and right now it's looking for a big window; a properly dominant one, filling a good chunk of the frame.

Put it on a glass display case, or a pair of glasses, or a window that only takes up a modest part of the scene, and the algorithm often does nothing at all. It isn't broken; it just doesn't think there's anything there worth working on.

I'd expect that to change. These tools tend to get better quickly, and smaller areas will almost certainly be handled in time. For now though, we take a slightly different route.

The Photoshop route

Worth saying first, doing it in Camera Raw or Lightroom doesn't use any generative credits, which is one of the nicer things about it, but taking the file into Photoshop and using AI will use a credit, but you do get total control over what happens, and the result is clean.

It works like this.

1. open the image in Photoshop, which from Lightroom is a right click and Edit In > Adobe Photoshop

2. grab the Polygonal Lasso Tool, or whichever selection tool you get on with, and draw around the glass with the reflections in it

3. click Generative Fill on the Contextual Taskbar

4. in the model picker, choose Firefly Image 5

5. type in the prompt: remove the reflection from off the glass do not change the original content

6. hit Generate

That's it.

Firefly Image 5 is the part that matters here; it's designed to edit while holding on to the detail that's already in the file, so Photoshop isn't off inventing new objects and quietly swapping your subject for something it made up.

What comes back

Because it's a detail-preserving model, you get one result rather than the usual three variations to choose between.

The reflections go, and the things that were sitting behind the glass all along, book spines, shelves, whatever happens to be in there, come through properly. It looks very much like you'd screwed a polariser onto the front of the lens and dealt with it at the time of shooting, which is the bit I really like about it.

Removing People in Lightroom When You Don't Use Photoshop

Taking a person out of the middle of a group shot isn't something I'd do this way. If it were my picture I'd be in Photoshop, on layers, doing it properly by hand, because that's what I know and that's what gives me control over every last bit of it.

But that's me, and I've spent years getting comfortable in there. Plenty of people haven't, and don't want to, and have no particular reason to. So this post isn't really for photographers who already live in Photoshop. It's for everybody else.

Who this is actually for

If you edit in Lightroom and that's where you're happy, this is for you. If you don't have Photoshop installed and can't see the point in paying for something you'd open twice a year, this is for you as well. If you've had a go at layers and masks and found the whole thing off-putting, same again.

It doesn't have to be for professional work either. Most of the time it won't be. It's the family photo where somebody's stood in the middle who you'd rather wasn't, the holiday shot that would be lovely if it were just the four of you, the picture you want to get printed and stick on the wall. That's a perfectly good reason to want this, and there's no sense in learning a whole other application for it.

Why the Remove tool struggles here

Lightroom has Generative Remove built in and for everyday bits it's brilliant. A bin in the background, a stray sign, someone wandering through the far side of the frame, it deals with all of that without any fuss.

Ask it to take a whole person out of the middle of a group, though, and it tends to come unstuck. You get warped detail where the arms and hands were, limbs that seem to belong to nobody, and a strange empty space where the person was stood. Everybody else stays exactly where they were, which is really the giveaway. The gap is the problem, not the person.

Sending it over to Firefly

What you can do instead, without leaving your catalogue, is push the photo across to Adobe Firefly and let it rebuild that part of the frame.

It works like this.

• go to the Photo menu in Lightroom

• choose Generate in Firefly, then Edit photo

• pick your model in the panel at the bottom

• set the output quality to High

• write your prompt

• hit Generate

I tried a few models and GPT Image 2 gave me the most natural result of the lot. Worth trying a couple yourself, because they behave differently on the same picture.

The prompt is doing most of the work

This is the part that decides whether it works, so it's worth slowing down over.

A vague prompt gets you a vague result. Tell it to remove the person and that's all it'll do, which puts you straight back where you started with a hole in the middle of the photo. What you want is to describe the finished picture, not the job.

So ask for three things. Remove the person. Close the space between the people either side of them. Keep the original faces, clothing and background as they are. That last one is the bit most people leave out, and it's why results come back with faces that look subtly wrong and nobody quite able to say what's changed.

Say all three plainly, in a sentence or two, then generate.

Getting the resolution back

Firefly gives you a clean result, but a smaller one than you sent it. The original here was over 6000 pixels wide straight out of the camera, so there's one more step before you're done.

On the left hand toolbar there's an Upscale option. Take it up by 4x and you're back over 6000 pixels wide, which matches the original file. Hit Download, bring it back into your catalogue, and carry on editing it like any other frame.

That's it. No layers, no masks, no learning a second application.

What you're trading

I'd be doing this differently, and it's worth being honest about what that means. Doing it by hand in Photoshop gives you control over every pixel, and if the picture really matters, that control is the reason to learn it. Handing it to Firefly means accepting whatever it decides to give you, and sometimes that'll be a couple of goes before you get something you're happy with.

For a lot of pictures, though, that's a fine trade. You get the photo you wanted, in the software you already use, in about two minutes.

Have a watch of the video above if you'd rather see it happen than read about it. It goes quicker than it sounds.

Lightroom 9.5 - Why Render to DNG Changes Everything

Lightroom 9.5 has landed, and alongside the usual list of bug fixes, new camera and lens profiles and a few Windows performance tweaks, there are three additions that actually change how you work day to day.

One thing to get out of the way first. This update is for Lightroom Desktop. Classic had its own round of updates at the same time, but a couple of these features haven't made their way over to Classic yet, so if you're a Classic user, don't go looking for all of them.

Feather and Edge, for masks that don't bleed

The masking panel now has two new sliders, Feather and Edge.

If you use Camera Raw, or you've been running the pre-release builds, these will look familiar. They're just available to everyone now.

Worth being clear about what they do and what they don't. They don't make Lightroom any better at finding your subject. If Select Subject misses completely, these two sliders aren't going to rescue it. What they do is let you clean up the last few pixels along the edge of a selection, which is usually where the trouble is.

Turn on the mask overlay so you can actually see the boundary, then work the two sliders until the mask pulls tight against the edge. That's it. No more adjustments spilling over onto things you didn't want to touch.

On portraits it's the eyes, the lips and the skin masks, where a brightening adjustment has a habit of creeping onto the eyelid or the surrounding skin. On landscapes and architecture it's horizons, tree branches against a bright sky, and the edges of buildings, all the places a halo turns up if you're not careful.

Render to DNG, and why it's the interesting one

Right click any photo now and there's a new option in the menu: Render to DNG.

What it does is create a brand new file with all your current edits baked into the pixels, and it sits right alongside your original in the catalogue.

If you're a Photoshop person, think of it as a stamp visible layer. You get a flattened version to work on top of, and your original raw file is still sitting underneath it completely untouched, with every setting still live.

It says DNG, but it isn't raw

This is the bit worth slowing down for. Despite the .dng on the end, a rendered DNG is not a raw file. It's closer to a TIFF in a DNG wrapper.

Your original raw is the negative. It's holding all the hidden highlight and shadow data you can't see on screen but can pull back when you need to. The rendered DNG is the print. It has baked in whatever the picture looked like at the moment you rendered it, and anything you hadn't already recovered has gone.

So the rule is simple enough. Do your recovery on the raw. Pulling back a blown sky, lifting shadows that have gone dead, any serious white balance shift, all of that happens on the original file before you render anything. Once you've rendered, that detail isn't coming back.

What the rendered file is good for is adjusting rather than recovering. Contrast, fine tuning tone, stacking a heavy look on top. Things that work with what's already there rather than digging for what isn't.

Stacking presets without losing your edit

Here's where it earns its keep.

You know the problem. You spend twenty minutes dialling in exposure, tone curve and split toning, you get it exactly where you want it, and then you try a full look preset and it wipes the lot. Every slider you'd carefully set gets overwritten.

The way round it now is to finish your base edit on the raw file, right click and Render to DNG, then apply the preset to the new rendered file instead.

Because your edits are baked into the pixels of that rendered file, there are no sliders left for the preset to overwrite. It sits on top of your work rather than replacing it.

Just keep half an eye on the highlights when you're stacking, because a rendered file has less headroom than the raw did, and it'll clip sooner than you expect.

Crop and Expand

The Crop panel has been renamed Crop and Expand, and you can now drag the crop boundary outwards past the edge of the original frame. Handy for anything you framed a bit too tight.

When you expand, you get two ways to fill the new space.

Generative Expand uses AI to invent new content, which is what you want for a complicated background. It costs one credit on standard accounts, and it's free if you're on CC Pro.

Content-Aware Expand samples pixels from elsewhere in your own photo. It costs nothing on any plan, because it isn't generative, and for plain or repeating backgrounds it does the job perfectly well. Try that one first and save your credits for when you genuinely need them.

There's a catch with Generative Expand, though, and it's worth knowing about. When you run it, Lightroom flattens your existing AI edits, so any AI masking or Generative Remove you'd done gets locked in and you lose the ability to go back and tweak it.

Same fix as before. Do your AI edits and base adjustments on the raw, render to DNG, then drag the crop out and run the expand on the rendered file. Your master raw stays fully intact with the masks still live, and you've got a separate expanded version to export.

Everything else in 9.5

Beyond those three, there's a decent list of fixes and new support:

• masking sliders that wouldn't reset properly

• launch crashes caused by permission errors

• star rating glitches

• GPS data not pasting in local view

• smoother grid scrolling and faster window resizing on Windows

• new camera support for the GoPro Mission 1, GoPro Mission Pro and preliminary support for the Sony RX10 V

• new lens profiles including the Canon RF 7-14mm Fisheye, DJI Mavic 4 Pro, Sigma 85mm f/1.2 and a handful of macro lenses

So, next time you're editing

If a subject mask is bleeding onto something it shouldn't, reach for Feather and Edge.

If you want to try a preset over an edit you've already spent time on, render to DNG first.

And if you need a bit more room around a tight portrait, render to DNG, open Crop and Expand, and try Content-Aware before you spend a credit.

Render to DNG is the one I'd point at if you only look at one thing here. It's a small menu item that's easy to scroll past, and it quietly solves a problem plenty of us have been working around for years.

The Smart Way to Use Lightroom Shared Albums

My next project involves my local harbour and town, Lyme Regis in the southwest of the UK where I’ll be photographing the people who truly make the town what it is - the fishermen, cafe owners, restaurateurs, B&B hosts, ice cream sellers, and anyone else who steps in front of my camera.

Because a project like this has a lot of moving parts, I want the process to be completely frictionless. I need a seamless way for the people I photograph to access their portraits without chasing email addresses or risking sending files to the wrong person.

The perfect solution is the Share function in Lightroom. Whether you use Lightroom Desktop, Lightroom Classic, or Lightroom Mobile, this feature turns your cloud-synced albums into functional web galleries.

Here is exactly how to set it up and make it work for you.

1. Getting Your Images into the Cloud

To share an album, the images must be in the cloud so Lightroom can generate a web page.

• In Lightroom Desktop (Local Tab): If you keep files offline on hard drives, you can easily select a single image, multiple images (using Shift or Command/Control), or an entire folder. Right-click and choose Copy to Cloud. You can then add them to an existing folder or create a new album.

• In Lightroom Desktop (Cloud Tab): Simply click the + icon next to Albums and select Create Album. You can create an empty album and drop photos into it later.

• In Lightroom Classic: You work with Collections instead of albums. Create a new collection, give it a name, and ensure you check the box that says Sync with Lightroom.

Once synced, any collection from Classic or album from Desktop automatically populates across the entire cloud ecosystem, including Lightroom Mobile.

2. Managing Share Settings and Permissions

Once your album is in the cloud, right-click the album name in Lightroom Desktop and choose Share and Invite. This generates a dedicated web address for your gallery. Before sending it out, you can completely customize the experience.

• Link Access: Set the permissions to public or private depending on your audience.

• Settings & Interaction: You can allow viewers to download JPEG versions of the images, which is exactly how I handle the I Am Lyme project. You can also let them like and comment (which requires a free Adobe account) or toggle metadata and location visibility.

• Submitting Photos: There is an option to allow others to add photos to the album. This is brilliant if you are hosting a photo walk and want everyone to contribute their shots to a single gallery.

• Customization: You can alter how the page looks to visitors without changing your internal album settings. Change the display title, hide or show the author name, choose the layout grid (photo grid, column, or one-up), and switch between light and dark themes.

3. Sharing via Lightroom Mobile (and the QR Code Secret)

If you are out in the field like me, using Lightroom Mobile on your phone is the ultimate workflow hack.

Open your synced album on your mobile device, tap the Share icon in the upper right, and you will find the exact same options available on desktop.

The real magic here is the QR Code option. Lightroom Mobile can generate a unique QR code for that specific web gallery. You can show it directly on your screen for someone to scan, or download the QR code to your camera roll to print out. People can scan it, instantly view the gallery, and download their photos on the spot.

4. The Workaround for Pure Lightroom Classic Users

If you strictly use Lightroom Classic and prefer not to use Lightroom Mobile or the Desktop app, you can still easily use this feature.

Once you have created your collection and checked the Sync with Lightroom option, open your web browser and go to lightroom.adobe.com. Log in, find your synced collection under your albums, and click the Share icon on the right side. You will have full access to the web link and the QR code generator right from your browser.

Using shared albums keeps your client interaction simple, organized, and professional. Give it a try on your next project, and let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.

HDR in Photography: Dead, Dated, or Ready for a Comeback?

For years, HDR in photography has carried a bit of baggage.

Mention it to most photographers and they'll immediately picture those crunchy, overcooked images from the early 2010s. Glowing edges, strange colours, and a look that screamed "processing" louder than the actual subject. And honestly, fair enough. That version of HDR put a lot of people off, and for good reason.

The “HDR” Trend back in the early 2010s

But here's what's changed: HDR isn't what it used to be.

What we're talking about today is not that old exposure-blended, tone-mapped look that most of us learned to avoid. This is proper HDR editing, pulling more out of the image's dynamic range and displaying it on screens that can actually show it. It's less about creating a dramatic effect and more about giving the image room to breathe.

That distinction changes the conversation completely.

So what is HDR now?

At its simplest, HDR means high dynamic range; more tonal range than a standard dynamic range image can show. It’s not blending images together, it’s having the ability to really show what already exists in that file.

That sounds technical, but the practical version is straightforward. Think about a scene with a blazing sky, deep shadows, and subtle detail in between. In a standard SDR workflow, you end up squeezing all of that into a smaller box. You protect the highlights, lift the shadows, and find some kind of compromise.

With modern HDR editing, you're not forcing that compromise in the same way. You're working in a way that allows more brightness information to survive the edit, so when viewed on an HDR-capable screen, the image can look much closer to what the scene actually felt like.

That's the key difference.

This isn't about making everything loud. It's about giving the image more range.

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Check out this web page I put together to check if your display / device is capable of HDR.

Take a look on your computer, mobile and tablet device (if you have one)

🔗 LINK: hdrviewer.lovable.app

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Why the old HDR got a bad name

Let's be honest: old-school HDR deserved a fair amount of the criticism it got.

A lot of it was used as a shortcut to rescue badly exposed images, and the results were often heavy-handed. Software like Photomatix, which was the go-to tool for HDR processing back in those early days, made it incredibly easy to push things too far. Shadows were crushed, highlights flattened, and that distinctive grungy, over-cooked look became almost a signature of the era. At its worst, it was gimmicky. You knew exactly what you were looking at the moment you saw it.

Worth saying though: Photomatix is still around and still a perfectly viable option. Used with some restraint, it's capable of much more conservative, natural-looking results than its early reputation might suggest. But back then, subtlety wasn't really the point for a lot of people using it.

That's why many photographers developed a kind of instinctive resistance to anything labelled HDR.

But modern HDR is a different thing entirely.

It's not trying to shout at you. It's trying to reveal more subtlety. And when it's done well, most people won't even register that they're looking at an HDR image. They'll just think it looks rich, deep, and beautifully displayed.

Who is actually doing this?

More people than you might think.

The biggest shift is that the industry around HDR has finally started to catch up. More screens support it, editing software is building in proper HDR workflows, and image sharing is slowly becoming more compatible. That matters, because a workflow only becomes genuinely useful when you can see the result and actually share it.

Photographers are already experimenting with it in landscape work, cityscapes, interiors, sunsets, and any scene where the contrast is simply too much for a standard file to hold comfortably. It makes particular sense when the subject contains bright highlights that you want to keep bright, without the rest of the image falling apart around them.

So yes, people are doing it. Not everyone, and not for every image. But enough that it's moving from niche curiosity toward something more mainstream.

Why it matters now

This is where HDR becomes genuinely interesting from a photographer's point of view.

We've reached a point where many viewers already have HDR-capable phones, tablets, laptops, televisions, and monitors. The image you edit is no longer always limited to the old one-size-fits-all SDR world. Some people can actually see more of what you intended when you made it.

That opens up real creative possibilities.

A sunset can hold brighter light without clipping into mush. A window-lit interior can keep detail outside without destroying the atmosphere inside. A seascape can carry that glowing, luminous quality we often try to suggest with standard editing but don't always fully achieve.

In the right hands, HDR isn't flashy. It's expressive.

Where it fits in a workflow

The best way I think about HDR is this: it's another tool, not a replacement for everything else.

It won't suit every photograph. Some images are better left in a standard workflow, particularly if the scene is already well contained or if you want a classic, controlled look. HDR also won't make much difference if your audience is mostly viewing on SDR screens.

But for the right image, it can be brilliant.

The skill, then, isn't just learning how to switch HDR on. It's knowing when it adds value and when it doesn't. That's usually where good photography lives anyway. Not in using every feature available, but in using the right one at the right time.

Is HDR the future?

I think so, yes. Just not in the old dramatic sense.

We're not heading back to the days of overprocessed HDR everywhere. That era is done, and rightly so. But we are moving towards a more natural, more display-aware way of working, where HDR becomes a normal part of the photographic toolbox rather than a novelty.

How quickly that happens depends on a few things catching up together: displays, software, and sharing platforms. But the direction is clear.

More of the world is becoming HDR-capable, which means photographers will increasingly need to understand how to work with that reality, whether they choose to or not.

Final thoughts

HDR is not dead.

What's dead is the old caricature of it. The version that turned every photo into a neon soap opera. The modern version is far more interesting, far more useful, and far more in step with where technology is heading.

For photographers, the opportunity is simple: start paying attention now. Learn what modern HDR actually is, watch how it develops, and think about where it fits in your own work, because this feels less like a passing fad and more like a genuine shift in the way images are made and seen.

Lightroom Virtual Summit 2026

The Lightroom Virtual Summit is BACK running from 1st June to the 5th June 2026, including 45 classes (33hrs +) of Lightroom Education which you can watch completely for FREE!

🚨 Link for FREE PASS: https://glyndewis.krtra.com/t/e7YtyIDicEoQ

InstructorS

Anthony Morganti, Ben Willmore, Chris Orwig, CliffordPickett, ColinSmith, DanielGregory, GregBenz, JaredPlatt, Jesús Ramirez, Kristina Sherk, LisaCarney, Matt Kloskowski, PeterMorgan, RobSylvan, Sean McCormack, TimGrey ... and yours truly 😃

FREE TO WATCH

All classes are free to watch for a 48 period once they go live, and there’s an optional VIP Pass available for purchase that gives you lifetime access to the recordings of all classes, instructor-provided class notes and exclusive bonuses (including additional videos).

Lightroom AI - You're using it in the WRONG ORDER

In Lightroom Classic, Desktop, and Camera Raw, a yellow warning icon often appears in the AI Edit Status panel. This happens when you perform edits out of the recommended "order of operations," signaling that certain AI-generated layers need to be updated or rerendered.

While you can still edit in any order, jumping around can lead to unpredictable results. For example, applying an adaptive color profile and then using the "Denoise" or "Remove" tool might cause the colors and highlights to shift once the AI is forced to update.

The Recommended Workflow: Prepare, Repair, Finesse

To maintain total control over how your image looks, it is best to follow this three-step sequence:

1. Prepare: Start with edits that affect the entire image, such as Denoise, Raw Details, Super Resolution, or HDR. This is the foundation of your edit.

2. Repair: Next, clean up the image by removing distractions. Use the Remove tool (with Generative AI) or Distraction Removal for things like reflections, dust spots, or unwanted objects.

3. Finesse (or Finish): Once the image is prepped and repaired, move on to creative adjustments, such as Adaptive Color Profiles or intricate masking.

Handling the AI Edit Status Warning

If the yellow icon appears, it is a reminder that your AI edits may no longer be perfectly synced with the current state of the image.

• Click to Update: Always click the icon and select "Update" before finishing your edit.

• Reassess: After updating, look closely at your image. Because the AI is rerendering, the results might look slightly different than before.

• Don't Just Export: If you try to export while the icon is yellow, a popup will warn you. Instead of clicking "Export" anyway, it is safer to cancel, update the edits manually, and ensure you are happy with the changes before saving the final file.

By following the Prepare, Repair, Finesse order, you ensure your editing remains predictable and that the final export looks exactly as you intended.