My favorite retro lens filter for a film-like look is now a digital slider. Adobe has sneak-launched a new “glow” slider, and I’m already obsessed

The filter that lives on my favorite camera lens a majority of the time is a diffusion filter, which gives light sources a glow that feels like a retro film lens. But now a new slider from Adobe is mimicking that retro effect – and it’s a new launch hidden inside Adobe Camera RAW.

While Photoshop got a major announcement last week with a new light adjustment layer, the new update to Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) came with little fanfare. ACR is Adobe’s RAW file converter that edits and preps RAW files before opening them inside Photoshop.

ACR now has a new slider called “Glow.” The new slider acts a lot like a digital version of a diffusion filter. As Adobe describes, “Glow spreads light from the brightest areas of your image into surrounding tones, creating everything from a subtle haze to a strong cinematic bloom.”

With the diffusion filter as one of my favorites, I immediately had to try out Adobe’s new Glow slider. The slider spreads out light sources in the photograph, but in spreading it out, the tool also seems to dim the light source just a bit.

Importantly, the glow tool works for all the brightest areas of the image, not necessarily just light sources. For example, when I used the tool to exaggerate a sun flare, it also emphasized the sun’s reflection off the building and obscured some of the details in those highlights.

Like any slider, there’s such a thing as going too far. At 100 percent in some shots I tried, the light-up windows in a city streetscape took on a more unnatural hard edge. That’s why the tool is built as a slider, giving photo editors the power to choose how much or how little of the effect to dial in.

But, there’s a bit more control built into the new tool than just the overall slider. Clicking on the arrow next to the tool opens up additional sliders for more control, including adjustments for the amount of light spread.

A drop-down filter here also allows creators to choose from different types of glow effects, including halation and bloom, along with the standard diffusion. Bloom is my favorite, as this slider allows the light to spread into the darker portions of the image as well.

The new tool will also mimic the look of a warm diffusion filter by using the warmth slider.

The new glow slider is also available inside ACR’s masking tools, which is useful if you want one light source to spread but not another.

Modern camera lenses are often built with multiple coatings that help suppress flare and ghosting. Vintage lenses often didn’t have these coatings – or at least had fewer of them – which is why film cameras tended to create a glow around light sources. A diffusion filter can help modern lenses mimic that look, but now there’s a tool to play around with before opening a RAW file inside Photoshop.

The new Glow Slider is located inside Adobe Camera RAW version 18.6 under the “Effects” section of tools, just underneath the grain tool.

Editing multiple RAW files tends to be easier in Lightroom than in ACR – so this is a slider that I really hope to see come to Lightroom next. It’s not uncommon for a tool to arrive in ACR before launching in Lightroom, like with the recent reflection removal tool, so I don’t think hoping for a similar Lightroom tool is too far-fetched.