Adobe enhances Camera Raw with new glow effects and photo editing workflows for faster, more integrated image processing

Adobe’s latest updates to Camera Raw and Photoshop introduce innovative features like a new Glow effect, trim command, and prompt-driven editing workspace, redefining early-stage raw processing and creative flexibility.

Adobe’s late-summer updates to Camera Raw and Photoshop show a clearer division of labour inside its imaging software. Camera Raw 18.6, released in August 2026, adds a new Glow effect, a Trim command for transparent cut-outs and an at-a-glance metadata panel, while the preceding Camera Raw releases concentrated on practical photographic controls such as autofocus-point display, vectorscopes and raw-native generative expansion. In parallel, Adobe has been building an optional prompt-driven editing space inside Photoshop rather than folding every new feature into the conventional layer-based editor.

The most visible addition is Glow, a new control in Camera Raw’s Effects panel that brings three distinct looks into the raw workflow: Diffusion, Bloom and Halation. Adobe describes the tool as one that “spreads light from the brightest areas of your image into surrounding tones, creating everything from a subtle haze to a strong cinematic bloom.” DPReview reported that the effect can be applied globally or through masks, but that the style controls remain shared across the image. That matters because it turns what used to be a plug-in or finishing effect into something photographers can test before the file is rendered out of raw. Both DPReview and PetaPixel noted that Glow is currently limited to Adobe Camera Raw rather than Lightroom.

Hands-on reactions suggest the tool is more nuanced than a simple soft-focus filter. Writing for PetaPixel, Jeremy Gray said the main Glow slider controls intensity, while Range decides which tones are affected, Spread governs how far the effect extends beyond those tones and Warmth shifts the colour cast cooler or warmer. He described Diffusion as an Orton-style look, Bloom as more tightly targeted to the brightest parts of the frame and Halation as a simulated film effect with a pronounced red bloom around light sources. Digital Camera World’s Hillary K. Grigonis found that the slider behaves like a digital diffusion filter rather than a blur, spreading highlights into neighbouring tones and slightly dimming the source itself. She also warned that pushing it to 100 per cent can create harsh, artificial edges around lit windows and other bright details.

The other August additions are less showy but more directly useful in production work. The new Trim command in the Crop & Expand panel removes everything outside a crop and makes it transparent instead of merely hiding those pixels, which shortens the route from raw processing to compositing. DPReview said that makes it easier to produce clean assets for layered work and also pairs logically with Generative Expand. The Metadata Info Panel, meanwhile, keeps basic file inspection inside Camera Raw, showing items such as camera and lens data, image dimensions, file size, capture date, copyright information, file name, caption and content credentials. DPReview also noted extra lens support in the release, including the Tamron 12-20mm F2.8 and Reeflex anamorphic and fisheye lenses for iPhone.

Adobe had already laid important groundwork in Camera Raw 18.5. According to the company’s release notes, that version introduced AI-powered Blemishes removal with Amount and Fade sliders so users can reduce or restore individual marks rather than flattening skin wholesale. The same release added a preference switch to turn off generative features such as Generative Remove, Generative Expand and Distraction People Removal for users who do not want AI tools in their workflow. Adobe also added Render to DNG, which bakes the current edit state into a new DNG file, plus a revised vectorscope that can be rotated with a “Show Red at 3 o’clock” option and now displays Lab values for more exact colour readings.

For many photographers, however, the most consequential recent change may be the autofocus-point overlay introduced in Camera Raw 18.4.1 in July. Adobe says supported Canon, Nikon and Sony raw files can now display the camera’s recorded focus points directly over the preview, either through the contextual menu or with Ctrl + Alt + Shift + O on Windows and Command + Option + Shift + O on macOS. Photoshop Roadmap reported that the feature is especially useful when checking whether a critical detail really took focus at capture time, before a user commits to an edit or culls a near-duplicate frame. The same July update also brought Generative Expand to Camera Raw; Matt Kloskowski advised unlocking the crop aspect ratio first for better edge control and warned that Firefly-powered expansion uses generative credits, making it something to use selectively rather than by default. His report also highlighted new independent feather triangles for bidirectional linear gradients and a full-screen presentation mode for reviewing images.

Those updates build on earlier colour and masking changes that are easy to overlook but significant in aggregate. Adobe’s June release added a vectorscope accessed by right-clicking the histogram, along with a Skin Tone Indicator for checking complexion balance on the full image or within a mask. In May, Camera Raw gained Feather and Edge controls for AI masks and three-way colour wheels inside the masking system. Taken together, those tools move more selective grading and correction into Camera Raw itself, reducing the need to jump immediately into Photoshop for work that is still essentially photographic rather than compositional.

Photoshop is moving in a different but related direction. In a product post published on 27 August 2026, Adobe said Photoshop now includes an optional beta workspace called AI Assisted Editor, built around a natural-language prompt bar and tools such as Prompt to Edit, Remove Background, Generative Expand, Remove Tool, Generative Fill, Generative Upscale and AI Markup. Adobe presented that space as an alternative to, not a replacement for, the Pro Editor. The same post said Prompt to Edit can also run from the Pro Editor’s Contextual Task Bar, with each result added as a generative layer so the layer stack remains organised and non-destructive. Adobe also used the announcement to push more conventional workflow features, including Dynamic Text, Shapes and Paths, which extends automatic text fitting to custom shapes and curved paths.

The combined effect is that Adobe is no longer treating Camera Raw as a mere staging area before “real” editing begins. Instead, it is turning the raw converter into a deeper photographic workspace, one where users can verify focus, judge skin tones, apply film-style glow, expand a canvas and even create composite-ready cut-outs before rendering the file. At the same time, Photoshop is being split more openly between fast prompt-led ideation and the established precision workflow of layers, masks and manual control. For photographers and retouchers, that is the real story behind the recent releases: more can now be done earlier, on the raw file, while the jump into Photoshop is increasingly reserved for the edits that genuinely need it.