reducing facial shine?

kevinpw

hi,

i have a portrait pic taken in a very very dark room where i was forced to use flash. this resulted in a picture with a lot of facial shine. how do i reduce facial shine without making the picture look artificial or too doctored?

thanks a lot!

Richard

kevinpw wrote:

hi,

i have a portrait pic taken in a very very dark room where i was forced to use flash. this resulted in a picture with a lot of facial shine. how do i reduce facial shine without making the picture look artificial or too doctored?

thanks a lot!

Hi Kevin and welcome to Dgrin. I moved your post to Finishing School, which is where we discuss post processing. It would help if you posted a large copy of the pic you want to alter.

Cheers,

kevinpw

Thanks Richard. Here is the image I am talking about.

http://www.kevinpw.com/photos/653985869_ScdGS-M.jpg

Larger: http://www.kevinpw.com/photos/653985869_ScdGS-L.jpg

Thanks a lot!

malch

What tools?
This can certainly be done although it's not that easy to do well.

First, it depends what tools you have available.

Photoshop will probably do the best job but it took me quite a while to develop good techniques for flash shine. I typically make use of several tools including the Healing Brush, Clone Stamp and Patch tools. Darken blend mode can be helpful. So can BlendIf sliders when working around the hair line. And sometimes I use a little high pass sharpening to restore texture if the touched up skin looks too flat.

So, let us know what editing tools you have available. But also be prepared to invest some time if you want to learn to do a good job on flash shine.

kevinpw

thanks malch. I have both Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom.

malch

kevinpw wrote:

thanks malch. I have both Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom.

Try this for starters.

Create a new (empty) layer. Use the Healing Brush to paint over the shiny areas. If the shine is very close to a strongly contrasting area (e.g. near the hair) work on a selection to prevent the hair blending back into the skin.

Lower the opacity of your new layer to around 60-80%. This will probably get you to a reasonable point without too much complexity.

Small variations that sometimes help:

* Playing with blending mode on the new layer. Sometimes Darken helps, sometimes Luminosity will prevent unwanted color shifts.
* BlendIf can be use to protect certain areas (like dark hair).
* Adding some gaussian blur to the new layer may help hide any transitions.
* In some cases, the Clone Stamp or Patch tools work better than the Healing Brush. Sometimes you'll use a combination.
* A little selective sharpening can sometime restore texture that has been excessively smoothed by the earlier painting. Alternatively, blending in a little noise can help prevent that nasty "plastic" look.

I think it's worth investing some time practicing on these kinds of images. Once you've done a dozen or two, you'll develop some instincts that will enable you to do a really good job in a minute or two and maybe much faster.

Do work on layers -- you'll be able to discard edits that didn't work out and try again. Also use the opacity slider to retain some of the original lighting -- you don't want to completely flatten the lighting -- just tone it down so it's not a distraction.

divamum

There was a recent thread on this in the Technique forum, found here. Hope that helps!

kevinpw

thanks guys, ill try your suggestions!

Snapper

Here's a real simple technique I use. It's not for the cover of Vogue, but for family snaps it's fine.

1. Create a new empty layer above the background.
2. Set this layer to "Darken", opacity around 50%.
3. Select a soft round brush, a little smaller than the glare area you want to fix.
4. Hold down "option" and sample the skin colour right next to the glare area.
5. Using this colour, paint over the glare onto the Darken layer - you don't even need to be too accurate with you painting.
6. That's it! You can adjust the opacity of the Darken layer to taste. Often the result may appear unnaturally smooth, so you can add a little noise to roughen it up. Merge layers when done.



Like I say - not for magazine covers, but for a series of shots of a family gathering it's a life-saver.

Attached is a quick before and after using this technique.