What Is New in Lightroom Classic 15.6?
What Is New in Lightroom Classic 15.6? Features and Updates
Discover what's new in Lightroom Classic 15.6, including improved Reflection Removal, simpler masking controls and expanded camera and lens support.
Lightroom Classic 15.6
Improved Reflection Removal, streamlined masking and expanded camera and lens supportAdobe released Lightroom Classic 15.6 in September 2026, introducing a focused update to its established desktop photo-editing and catalogue-management application. Rather than redesigning the editing workflow, this release concentrates on improving existing tools, particularly Reflection Removal, simplifying selections in the Masking panel, and extending camera and lens compatibility.
For photographers working across nature, birds in flight, landscape, architecture and maritime photography, these refinements are relevant to the practical business of processing images. The most interesting development is the improved ability to remove unwanted reflections, while the revised masking workflow offers a small but useful efficiency improvement when making local adjustments.
This article examines the principal changes in Lightroom Classic 15.6, their practical applications and what photographers should consider when integrating the update into an established editing workflow.
1. Improved Reflection Removal
The headline enhancement in Lightroom Classic 15.6 is an improvement to the existing Reflection Removal tool. Adobe reports cleaner results when removing reflections from windows, glass and water, with fewer residual smudges and ghosting artefacts.
Reflections present a particular challenge in digital image processing. The unwanted reflected light can overlap the underlying subject, introducing additional edges, highlights, colours and patterns. Separating these layers computationally is difficult because the reflection and the scene beneath it are recorded together in the same image.
The improved tool aims to produce a more convincing result when reducing or removing these unwanted visual elements.
Practical applications for photographers
Architecture photography
Reflections on office windows, commercial buildings and glass-fronted structures can obscure architectural details. Improved reflection removal may help when photographing buildings through glass or when reflective surfaces compete with the intended composition.
Maritime photography
Glass reflections can interfere with photographs taken from inside a building, vehicle or vessel. The updated tool may help in selected situations where reflections obscure a harbour scene or vessel.
However, photographers should distinguish between unwanted reflections on glass and the natural reflection of a ship on the water. Water reflections are often an integral part of a maritime composition. Removing them indiscriminately could weaken the photograph's visual character.
Landscape photography
Reflections encountered when photographing through windows or other transparent surfaces may sometimes be reduced without resorting to extensive manual retouching.
Nature photography
Reflection removal can be useful when a subject is photographed through reflective glass. It is less straightforward when the reflection is interwoven with fine details, vegetation or complex backgrounds.
What to expect
The improvement does not mean that every reflection can be removed perfectly. Results will depend on the complexity of the reflection, the underlying scene and the information available in the original image.
Photographers should inspect the edited result at an appropriate magnification, paying particular attention to fine edges, repeated patterns, texture and areas where the software may have reconstructed missing details.
The objective is not simply to eliminate a reflection, but to produce a believable image without introducing conspicuous processing artefacts.
2. New Check All and Check None options in Masking
Masking is a fundamental component of non-destructive editing. Instead of applying an adjustment to the entire photograph, a photographer can target a particular subject, region or environmental element.
For example, a nature photographer might want to adjust the exposure of a bird without significantly changing the surrounding vegetation. A landscape photographer might want to work on the sky separately from the foreground. Architectural photography may require different adjustments for a building's structure and its surroundings.
The Masking panel provides tools for constructing these selections, while Lightroom's AI-assisted masking features can help identify specific elements within a photograph.
Why the new controls matter
When working with complex selections, photographers sometimes need to enable or disable several mask components before applying an adjustment. The new controls simplify that selection process.
Check All: Selects all available landscape or people mask options in the relevant selection workflow.
Check None: Clears the current selections, allowing the photographer to start again with a more selective combination.
These controls are particularly useful when experimenting with different combinations of available mask components or when refining an editing procedure that is repeated across multiple photographs.
It is important to understand that these are workflow improvements, not entirely new masking technologies. They reduce the number of manual selection steps rather than fundamentally changing what Lightroom can recognise in an image.
Application to birds in flight
For birds in flight, masking is often used to balance the exposure of a bird against a bright sky or to make carefully controlled adjustments to the subject's tonal range.
A photographer might use a subject selection to adjust the bird's exposure, shadows or texture while leaving the background largely unchanged.
The Check All and Check None controls are not, by themselves, a new bird-detection feature. Their benefit lies in simplifying the selection of available landscape and people mask options. Bird-specific editing still depends on the masking tools and selections appropriate to the photograph.
For precise bird photography, the photographer should continue to inspect the mask around feathers, wing tips, beaks and other fine edges before committing to substantial adjustments.
3. Expanded camera and lens support
Lightroom Classic 15.6 also expands its support for camera models and lenses. Adobe's release information confirms additional camera and lens compatibility, although photographers should consult the official compatibility lists to establish whether a particular device is included.
Camera and lens support is an important part of the Lightroom ecosystem because the software must recognise the characteristics of an image file before providing the appropriate processing options.
For photographers using Canon EOS R-series cameras, the availability of the correct camera profile and lens profile can affect the editing workflow.
Camera support and lens support serve different purposes:
Camera support allows Lightroom to recognise and process files from the relevant camera model.
Lens-profile support can provide corrections for supported optical characteristics, such as distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration, where applicable.
These capabilities are not interchangeable. A camera can be supported even if a particular lens profile is unavailable, and lens corrections depend on the lens, file type and available profile.
Relevance to Canon photographers
Photographers using modern Canon mirrorless cameras should verify that their particular camera and lens combinations are supported before planning a workflow around the new release.
For my own Canon photography, the practical consideration is the complete imaging chain: camera, lens, RAW or C-RAW file, Lightroom processing and final output. A supported file format is only the starting point. The quality of the final photograph also depends on exposure, focus accuracy, optical performance and subsequent editing decisions.
For anyone who has recently acquired a camera or lens, checking the updated compatibility lists is a sensible step before assuming that all available profiles and processing features will work as expected.
4. What about performance and bug fixes?
Lightroom Classic 15.6 includes critical bug fixes, according to Adobe's official release notes. The public release summary does not present this version as a major performance redesign, nor does it identify a new general-purpose editing engine.
That distinction matters when deciding whether to update.
A new version number does not necessarily mean that every aspect of the software will become faster. Performance depends on the computer's processor, memory, graphics processing unit, storage, catalogue condition, image dimensions and the operations being performed.
Photographers using older computers should therefore distinguish between improvements delivered by the application and limitations imposed by their hardware.
After updating, it is worth testing the operations that matter most to an individual workflow, including:
- Importing new photographs.
- Generating and viewing previews.
- Moving between photographs in the Develop module.
- Applying masks and local adjustments.
- Running AI-assisted features.
- Exporting completed photographs.
This is especially relevant when working with large RAW files or batches of images from demanding photography sessions.
5. How does Lightroom Classic 15.6 compare with version 15.5?
The preceding August 2026 release, Lightroom Classic 15.5, introduced several more visible editing workflow changes. These included Feather and Edge controls for masking, adjustable image opacity for more precise cropping, and the Render to DNG feature.
The distinction between the two releases is useful when considering the direction of Lightroom's development.
Version 15.5 concentrated on expanding the photographer's control over masking, cropping and the creation of rendered DNG files. Version 15.6 builds on that foundation with improved reflection removal, simpler mask selection and additional camera and lens support.
For photographers who have not yet explored the earlier updates, the latest version should be considered in the context of both releases.
The following progression summarises the development:
Lightroom Classic 15.5: Greater control over masking boundaries, cropping and rendered DNG workflows.
Lightroom Classic 15.6: Cleaner reflection removal, more convenient landscape and people mask selection, and expanded camera and lens compatibility.
The broader direction is one of incremental refinement. Adobe continues to develop tools intended to reduce repetitive work while giving photographers greater control over the editing process.
6. Recommended workflow after updating
A practical approach is to evaluate the new features against photographs that present genuine editing challenges rather than testing them only on straightforward images.
For Vernon Chalmers Photography, three types of photographs offer particularly useful opportunities.
A. Maritime photography: reflections and vessel detail
Use an existing photograph of a vessel or harbour scene containing unwanted reflections on glass. Compare the original and processed images, inspecting edges and fine details for signs of reconstruction artefacts.
Keep natural water reflections intact when they contribute to the photograph's atmosphere, symmetry or interpretation of the scene.
B. Nature photography: selective adjustments
Experiment with the available masking options on a photograph containing a clearly defined subject and a more complicated background. Assess whether the new selection controls simplify the process of constructing the desired mask.
Check feather detail, fine branches and overlapping elements at high magnification before applying strong local adjustments.
C. Architecture photography: reflective surfaces
Test Reflection Removal on a photograph of a building with prominent window reflections. Examine whether the resulting image preserves straight architectural lines, surface textures and the visual consistency of the façade.
These tests provide a more meaningful assessment than relying solely on the feature description. They also help establish which tools deserve a permanent place in an individual editing workflow.
7. Should photographers update to Lightroom Classic 15.6?
For photographers already using Lightroom Classic, version 15.6 offers several practical reasons to consider updating, particularly if reflection removal or AI-assisted masking forms part of their regular workflow.
The decision should nevertheless account for catalogue safety, system stability and compatibility with existing equipment.
Before updating, ensure that the catalogue and original photographs are backed up. After installation, confirm that the catalogue opens correctly and that essential presets, profiles, plug-ins and export settings remain available.
Photographers who depend on Lightroom for professional delivery should also test a small batch of representative photographs before moving directly into a large editing session.
There is no need to change an established workflow merely because a new release is available. The objective is to determine whether the improvements offer a tangible benefit to the work being produced.
Conclusion: incremental improvements with practical value
Lightroom Classic 15.6 is a refinement release rather than a fundamental transformation of Adobe's desktop photography application.
Its most significant enhancement is the improved Reflection Removal tool, which aims to deliver cleaner results on reflective surfaces with fewer smudges and ghosting artefacts. The Check All and Check None controls simplify selection within landscape and people masking workflows, while expanded camera and lens support improves compatibility for photographers using newer equipment.
For nature, birds in flight, architecture, landscape and maritime photography, the value of these changes depends on how they address real editing challenges.
Reflection Removal deserves particular attention for architecture and selected maritime images. The masking controls offer a modest workflow improvement, while camera and lens compatibility remains important for photographers maintaining a modern digital imaging system.
The underlying principle remains unchanged: software should support photographic intent, not replace photographic judgement. Lightroom can assist with selection, tonal control and the removal of unwanted visual elements, but the photographer remains responsible for preserving detail, interpreting the scene and deciding when an edit has gone too far.
For a working photographer, the most useful update is ultimately the one that improves the consistency, efficiency and quality of the finished image.
References
Adobe. (2026). Lightroom Classic release notes. Adobe Help Center. Official release notes.
Adobe. (2026). What's new in Lightroom Classic. Adobe Help Center. Official feature overview.
Editorial note: This draft reflects the features documented for the September 2026 release. Before publishing, it would be useful to verify the exact camera and lens additions against Adobe's current compatibility lists if you intend to name specific Canon models in a follow-up technical guide.
