Removing Flare

scottV

I like the flare look in this picture, with the exception of the one that landed right on her forehead. Haven't had much luck cloning it out and still looking good, any other suggestions?

BinaryFx

scottV wrote:

Haven't had much luck cloning it out and still looking good, any other suggestions?

Scott, in situations like this - the answer is often in the colour channels of the image (sometimes Lab mode and not RGB, however in this case the blue channel of RGB was suitable)...

Workflow Overview:
I would dupe the original image and work on the dupe. When finished with the corrections I would copy merged and then layer the flat corrected file over the original. Next I would add a layer mask to blend in the edits to the hair/face/neck area without altering the other areas of the original image.

Basic Correction Steps:
1. Copy the blue channel data to the clipboard
2. Paste this data as a new layer, set layer to luminosity mode
3. Add a new blank layer set to color blend mode
4. Clone the good colour from the hair and face into the bad areas in the colour blend layer
5. Add a new blank layer set to luminosity mode (or perhaps normal)
6. Using the smudge tool, set the brush tip to a very small pixel size and high strength - with the use all layers option selected
7. Smudge in highlights and shadows to fake the missing hair detail, using darken and lighten modes in the smudge tool (or perhaps use an appropriate colour and the brush tool etc)

A very quick and rough example of the process is documented in the following screencast video. This will mostly reduce the flare, however more work would be required to totally remove it. This probably sounds complex in the text instructions above, however I hope that this short 2.6mb/1.5 minute flash video tutorial will help:

http://www.screencast.com/t/XL4NkyrwC

As this method uses the blue channel, channel artifacts may degrade the image (the blue channel often has lots of junk in it). You may wish to perform similar steps as outlined in this link before using the blue channel data:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/howto_colourblur.html


P.S. You may also wish to fix the lower centre right of the frame, not all clients appreciate flare and see it as a distraction (I agree that it adds some drama at the head of the frame).


Regards,

Stephen Marsh

members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
prepression.blogspot.com/