Review: Glow Effects in Lightroom

Stephen Knight

3 hours ago

3 min read

Adobe have released Lightroom Classic version 16 (November 2026), and it quite possibly has some of the most useful new functionality we've seen for some time. The new Glow module in both Lightroom and Lightroom Classic has creative effects including Bloom, Diffusion, Halation, Motion, and Streak. Glow is found the Effects module, below vignetting and grain.

Bloom

Bloom adds a misty bloom around bright light sources. This can be useful for cityscape, landscape., and portrait photography. The amount slider changes the intensity. Range controls the brightness threshold. Spread, does what is says on the tin, and controls the light spread. Warmth allows the colour temperature to be adjusted from cool to warm white. The Bloom effect reduces the requirement for using white and black mist lens filters. It only creates white light, so doesn't bloom coloured light sources with the original colour.

Diffusion

Diffusion, seems to act like a de-clarity, but with more control. The amount slider changes the intensity, range controls brightness threshold, and spread controls the effects spread. Colour temperature can also be adjusted with warmth.

Halation

Halation is a popular effect which adds orange to red light around bright lights, most commonly seen on film with the Remjet layer removed, such as Cinestill 800T. This effect is most commonly used for night cityscape photography. I'm glad that this is now available in Lightroom. The amount slider changes the effect intensity. Range controls brightness threshold which is critical for Halation. Spread controls the spread of the Halation effect. Warmth changes the Halation colour from yellow to red. I would like to see full hue control in a future update, as found in DaVinci Resolve.

Motion and Streak

Motion and Streak both add streak like effects - Motion on one side of the light source, and Streak on opposite sides. For Motion, the amount slider changes the effect intensity. Range controls the brightness threshold. Spread controls the length of the light streak on one side of the light source. Warmth controls the colour temperature. Direction controls the direction of the light streak in 360 degrees. Softness controls the softness of the light streak's edge.

Streak is similar in functionality, and can create lens flare effects similar to an anamorphic lens. Amount slider changes the effect intensity. Range controls the brightness threshold. Spread controls the length of the light streaks on both sides of the light source. Warmth controls the colour temperature. Direction controls the direction of the light streak in 360 degrees. Softness controls the softness of the light streaks edge. As with Bloom, Motion and Streak only create white light, so it doesn't make light streaks the same colour as the light sources.

Portrait using Lightroom's Streak effect. Model: @mindy_madness_

Conclusion

Whilst the glow module can also be found in the mask settings, it is applied at global level. Allowing glow to be used with brushes would be a useful future improvement, The glow module is a very useful addition to Lightroom, and quite possibly the best upgrade since AI denoise a few years ago. It means that Lightroom users no longer need to use Photoshop or 3rd party software to add effects such as Halation or Bloom.