How to remove Glare? x 2

djsilver666666

How can I remove the glare from a picture that I took? Here it is:

wxwax

That would defeat me.

Seefutlung

Burning in (selective darkening) that area would help but not eliminate the problem. Working the shot over in photoshop ... working on minute areas at a time, would probably clean it up ... but it would take a ton of time and a very skilled operator. That is odd flare ... seems to be flare and CA all mixed together ... what lens and caneras were you using?

DavidTO

I don't believe you can get rid of it, but you can reduce it.

Now, I'm not going to say this is better. I spent 5 minutes on it. I used LAB mode, so that I could separate out the luminosity from color easily, and wrote curves and used layer masks and brushes.

djsilver666666

wxwax wrote:

That would defeat me.

:

DavidTO: Could you tell me how you did that? (sooner rather than later )

Edit: And Seefutlung, I used a Canon EOS Digital Rebel with a Sigma 28-90mm lens. It has the piddly-ist hood you've ever seen, about .5-inch long.

BTW how can I tell exactly what make my camera is?

DavidTO

djsilver666666 wrote:

:

DavidTO: Could you tell me how you did that? (sooner rather than later )

Sure.

But first: do you know how to use curves? Paint layer masks?

djsilver666666

No, not really...

I'm trying to finish these before Saturday. (I have two more of similar quality)

DavidTO

djsilver666666 wrote:

No, not really...

I'm trying to finish these before Saturday. (I have two more of similar quality)

OK. I will post something later tonight. Right now I have to make my drive home.

DavidTO

In the meantime, you should read up on our tutorials (navbar, top of the page) about using curves, layer masks and LAB (Pop for the adventurous beginner will help). LAB is another whole world, that the pop tute will help with, and the reading group (find it in finishing school) will help, as well, but it's a LOT to bite off. We could probably make these changes in RGB, as well, but I find LAB to be best for this. Whether it's best for you, where you are in your learning is another question.

DavidTO

OK, so I'm not an expert on this, but here's how I approach something like this.

Break the image into sections. You want to do localized corrections on an image like this, since there's not one correction that can get rid of the glare and not ruin the rest of your image. There are at least 3 sections to this image. The "normal" left side, the "intense glare" middle and the "falloff glare" on the right. I made those names up.

So, draw curves to correct one of those areas at a time, and mask that correction off so that it does not affect the others.

I did this in LAB, and the quick and dirty lesson in LAB is that it's Lightness, A and B.

Lightness is just that, the lightness value, from black to white with no color information at all.

A is the colors green and magenta, with positive values being magenta and negative being green. 0 is neutral.

B is blue and yellow, with positive values being yellow and negative being blue.

So what do you do with this information? Well, the first thing I did was to make a curve to minimize the glare, which is a combination of too bright lightness and too much color in the glare. Open up a curves adjustment layer (in LAB mode) and bring the black point up, and flatten the A and B curves (you'll see what I mean if you read those tutorials I mentioned above). Do this again for the falloff area, as well, you can keep working on the image, trying to build up positive changes. You can add as many adjustment layers as you want. And the beautiful thing about adjustment layers is that you can always undo your work.

Good luck, I hope that helps!

djsilver666666

I'll check the tuts out tommorow.

djsilver666666

DavidTO wrote:

OK, so I'm not an expert on this, but here's how I approach something like this.

Break the image into sections. You want to do localized corrections on an image like this, since there's not one correction that can get rid of the glare and not ruin the rest of your image. There are at least 3 sections to this image. The "normal" left side, the "intense glare" middle and the "falloff glare" on the right. I made those names up.

So, draw curves to correct one of those areas at a time, and mask that correction off so that it does not affect the others.

I did this in LAB, and the quick and dirty lesson in LAB is that it's Lightness, A and B.

Lightness is just that, the lightness value, from black to white with no color information at all.

A is the colors green and magenta, with positive values being magenta and negative being green. 0 is neutral.

B is blue and yellow, with positive values being yellow and negative being blue.

So what do you do with this information? Well, the first thing I did was to make a curve to minimize the glare, which is a combination of too bright lightness and too much color in the glare. Open up a curves adjustment layer (in LAB mode) and bring the black point up, and flatten the A and B curves (you'll see what I mean if you read those tutorials I mentioned above). Do this again for the falloff area, as well, you can keep working on the image, trying to build up positive changes. You can add as many adjustment layers as you want. And the beautiful thing about adjustment layers is that you can always undo your work.

Good luck, I hope that helps!

What program did you use? I have Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, but I am going to be getting CS2 or CS3 hopefully within the next month.

DavidTO

djsilver666666 wrote:

What program did you use? I have Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, but I am going to be getting CS2 or CS3 hopefully within the next month.

Oh.

That program you have will not do what I did, and those tutorials will not make sense to you, as they use features not available to you.

Post links to the original files and I or some other good samaritan will do what we can to help you by, uh, tomorrow, it looks like.

mdavis

There is some nasty color to deal with there, but one quick way to work with distant haze or flare in the absence of color damage is to duplicate a layer and change the blend mode to Multiply. You can then mask to control the effect between layers.

ziggy53

OK, for anyone who wants to help David out, the gallery is at:

http://djpics.smugmug.com/gallery/2797091#149303614

... and I believe the problem images at best resolution JPGs are:

http://djpics.smugmug.com/photos/149303614-O.jpg
http://djpics.smugmug.com/photos/149303637-O.jpg
http://djpics.smugmug.com/photos/149245529-O.jpg

(Oddly, the second and third are greatly different sizes from the first.)

DavidTO

Well, all you can do is reduce the damage. These will never look great. Here's my take on the first of those three that Ziggy linked.

Color and black and white:

http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/149655475-O.jpg

http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/149655792-O.jpg


And the original:

ziggy53

DavidTO,

These look great to me. I took a whack at them and I couldn't achieve anywhere nearly as good results. Bravo!

DavidTO

Here's another:


http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/149661539-O.jpg


http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/149661457-O.jpg

and the original:

DavidTO

Last one (and the hardest):



http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/149664088-O.jpg



http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/photos/149663878-O.jpg

rutt

Dan took a look at this. Here is his response to the question if it can be fixed, complete with a kind of clue:

Dan Margulis wrote:

Yes, but not quickly and not easily. The AB channels can isolate the glare but
I believe that three different masks are needed. Through those, one could
multiply the base and obtain correct luminosity values.

That's the easy part, though--the hard part is that the glare has also destroyed
the underlying color, which would be real tough for anybody who hasn't built
AB channels from scratch.

So, yes, it's doable, but it might take an hour. It's hard to imagine a
circumstance under which a client would find this image so important: more
likely he'd consider the image a loss from the get-go and never even ask the
question.

BestRetoucherEver

Well, here's my shot at it
This my first post on dgrin - thanks Rutt!

This is one of those images where you're not really "done" but you don't want to look at it any longer either.

I determined not to paint any masks except for a large vignette to isolate the glare, so when I started trying to isolate specific objects in the image I forced myself to stop.

J

rutt

So, can you explain your technique?

(And are you Howard?)

rutt

I guess it wasn't Howard (from ACT). He loves a good hard challenge like this, but be wouldn't miss the chance to explain his technique. I asked me to post it for him:

Howard Smith wrote:

This was a good one. Try the following:



Convert to LAB. Use Shadow/Highlight on the Lightenss channel, specifically
use the Highlights/Amount slider to tone down the glare.

Convert back to RGB. Use Hue-Saturation to reduce yellow in the Yellow.
Use a Luminosity Curve Adjustments Layer to fine-tune the contrast.

Create a new, blank layer and fill it with 50% gray in Overlay Mode. Use a
large, soft brush (foreground color Black) and paint over the 50% gray layer
in the areas where the glare is most pronounced. Try about 10% opacity,
Normal mode. Use Gaussian Blur to soften the 50% gray layer so the
brushstrokes are no longer obvious.



You can no doubt do more if you spend a few extra minutes on it. For a
problem image like this it's unlikely you can get decent results just with
the standard editing techniques. It just about cries out for infidvidual
touches like painting on the 50% gray layer.



Let us know what works best. While it's an extreme example, whatever we can
learn from it should help all of us with less serious problem images.

BestRetoucherEver

My technique

rutt wrote:

So, can you explain your technique?

(And are you Howard?)

As you said, I'm not Howard. I signed my name, but it's easy to miss since it's only one letter.

Here's a brief run-down of what I did...

1. In LAB, created 2 masks of the trouble "spots" using the A and B channels. Also created a simple gradient mask to protect the left side of the image and to lessen the corrections on the far right side.

2. In LAB, made 5 curves:
a. Master Lightness move sliding the shadow over 20-30% using the gradient mask.
b. Darkened spots in lightness using A mask, also adjusted the A channel.
c. Lightened slightly using inverted A mask.
d. Darkened sp ots in lightness using B mask, also adjusted the B channel.
e. Lightened slightly using inverted B mask.

I wasn't really happy with this result, and thought I'd try it in RGB.

3. In RGB, made several moves:
a. Using gradient mask, made a Curve move sliding the shadow over, Red more the others.
b. Hue/Saturation isolating various colors and either sliding the Hue towards the middle or decreasing Lightness.
c. Using A and B masks from the LAB file, used Highlight/Shadow to darken the blown out areas.

I was more happy with these results, but decided to put my LAB move on top and set it to 50% Normal. And that's where I left it.

I suppose the key to my moves was the A and B masks, but since I don't think it looks all that good I wouldn't call the correction a "success."

J Walton

BestRetoucherEver

Another Attempt
Here's one from my buddy at work. He used Neat Image to reduce/remove the splotches, and that worked really well. He then did a simple darken move, pushing shadow in RGB.

J

djsilver666666

Removing weird Glare?
I have some photos that I took at a soccer tournament, I positioned myself to try and get their faces. But in doing so I ignorantly had the sun facing me :bash so now I have some weird glare on almost all the pictures.

Example:




The glare is very spotty, any chance I could remove it?

nikos

djsilver666666 wrote:

The glare is very spotty, any chance I could remove it?

Not unless you try.

djsilver666666

Thanks for the sarcasm, what I was asking was this: should I try to remove the glare or will I be wasting my time?

I really am a newb of sorts so I cannot gauge this for myself. This glare is all rainbowed and covers about half the picture, normally I only deal with white glare/haze.

jfriend

djsilver666666 wrote:

I really am a newb of sorts so I cannot gauge this for myself. This glare is all rainbowed and covers about half the picture, normally I only deal with white glare/haze.

The image could be improved with some pretty advanced editing which I have seen others do and is largely beyond my capabilities, but it will never look all that great because it's not just a brightness or color issue - there is image detail just missing.

nikos

djsilver666666 wrote:

Thanks for the sarcasm, what I was asking was this: should I try to remove the glare or will I be wasting my time?

You won't know until you try.

DavidTO

DJ,

I'm losing count of how many pictures that you've asked for help with removing glare! You would be much better off spending some time learning how to shoot, or just thinking about what you're doing when you shoot rather than trying to fix that shot. Plus, we've been through this with you. I'm getting the feeling that you just want free help, but aren't wiling to learn or put any effort out yourself.