Adobe Camera Raw 19.0 Ships Batch AI Removal, Stacking and Virtual Copies

Adobe shipped Camera Raw 19.0 today, and the update quietly adds batch Generative Remove, Virtual Copies, photo stacking and session-level culling — tools aimed squarely at photographers who process high-volume shoots inside Photoshop rather than Lightroom.

ACR handles RAW decoding inside Photoshop and shares its processing engine with Lightroom. Features sometimes land in ACR first: Glow debuted there months before reaching Lightroom today, and Reflection Removal followed the same path. So what does this change for working photographers who live in ACR?

Which new features actually save time?

The headline item for volume shooters is batch Generative Remove. Photographers can now select a distracting element — a telephone pole, say — remove it in one frame, then apply the same removal across every selected photo in the session. No more masking the same pole out of two hundred frames by hand.

Virtual Copies, a Lightroom staple for years, have finally arrived in ACR. Each version's edits persist between sessions, so shooters can build multiple looks from a single original file without duplicating storage.

Session organization gets a real upgrade too. ACR 19.0 can group related photos into stacks, either manually or automatically using capture metadata. One caveat worth checking before you rely on it: Auto-Stack by Capture Metadata currently supports only recent Canon and Nikon cameras that output DNG. Manual stacking works for everyone.

For anyone who's scrolled a 900-frame filmstrip, there's also a new option to hide photos temporarily or show only selected shots during a session. Small feature, large sanity dividend.

What happened to Glow?

Glow, which reached Lightroom today after its ACR debut, gains two new styles in this release: Motion and Streak. Both are adjustable for length, direction, color and softness. It's a creative effect, not a corrective tool, but the added control makes it less of a one-trick filter.

New camera and lens support: check before you rent

Raw support additions run thin this cycle. Only the two cameras in the new Apple iPhone Duo join the supported list. Lens profiles are the more meaningful half:

• Sony FE 8-14mm f/3.5 Fisheye G
• Sony FE 400mm f/4.5 GM telephoto prime
• Sony FE 600mm f/6.3 GM telephoto prime
• New zooms from Sigma and Tamron
• Laowa 50mm f/2.8 2x Ultra-Macro APO, across many mounts

If you've preordered any of the Sony GM glass, profile support arriving now means corrections won't hold up delivery-week client work.

The pattern here is consistent: Adobe keeps folding Lightroom's organizational muscle into ACR, closing the gap for Photoshop-centric workflows. Whether batch Generative Remove credits count against Firefly generative allowances wasn't specified — worth confirming before running it across a four-figure sports shoot.