How to tone down reflected light

[Rufus]

The painting in the image below has a large area reflecting natural light from a window opposite which needs toning down.

I would welcome suggestions as to how I might tackle this task in Lightroom or Photoshop.

[Donald]

I would (in Photoshop):-
Copy the Background layer and pull the exposure way down, thereby creating a much darker image on top.
Put a mask on that image (black)
Take a brush and put the opacity of that way down to 5% of less
Zoom in to 100%
Start to paint (white) on the highlighted area ensuring that you allow for fading out around the edges.

[Geoff F]

If you shot in Raw mode that would be an advantage. I would edit for the general scene (in ACR) and open the image as a Smart Object, create a Smart Object copy and return that to ACR for editing to reduce the glare. Then place the copy as a layer and edit as Donald advised.

If using other software, but shot in Raw, you might still be able to create two edits from the same original Raw file and work with layers, as above.

You can still work from a one shot Jpeg but Raw may give you a slight advantage.

Which ever method you use will help to produce an improvement; but it will be very difficult/impossible to achieve an absolutely perfect result

Sometimes, it is worth experimenting with different layer blend modes to see if one will produce a better edit. For example, Luminosity instead of Normal blend.

[Manfred M]

David - this is one of those problems best handled at capture. Given the type of setting that you were shooting under, the obvious solution of blocking the light will not work; this would be the preferred solution and would certainly be the approach of a commercial photographer who was hired to shoot the room.

Use of a polarizing filter can sometimes reduce, but not eliminate. the glare.

Unfortunately, sometimes the solution is to walk away from the shot.

[DanK]

I would (in Photoshop):-
Copy the Background layer and pull the exposure way down, thereby creating a much darker image on top.
Put a mask on that image (black)
Take a brush and put the opacity of that way down to 5% of less
Zoom in to 100%
Start to paint (white) on the highlighted area ensuring that you allow for fading out around the edges.

Very interesting. I wonder how the results of this technique would differ from Manfred's approach to burning, which is to use a soft brush and low flow rate on a curves adjustment layer. Something to experiment with.

In this particular case, I suspect the image is beyond repair, in the sense that I don't think one can bring back the detail, but one could at least darken the reflection to make it less distracting.

[Donald]

Obviously Manfred's suggestion would be better. But David was asking what, if anything he can do with the image he has now.

[DanK]

Obviously Manfred's suggestion would be better. But David was asking what, if anything he can do with the image he has now.

I didn't mean Manfred's suggestion in this thread. I meant his suggestion about how to burn. Your suggestion is to paint from a darkened copy of the base layer. His is to paint from a masked curves adjustment layer.

[Manfred M]

I didn't mean Manfred's suggestion in this thread. I meant his suggestion about how to burn. Your suggestion is to paint from a darkened copy of the base layer. His is to paint from a masked curves adjustment layer.

The technique you are referring to Dan is primarily aimed at a far more gentle effect than taking out the hot spot. It would take a lot of work to build up the level of darkening required to fix this image. I would be tempted to use a more robust approach, like Donald is suggesting.

[Rufus]

Thank you for your comments everyone.

Manfred - Fair point, my image is no competition winner and perhaps I should have walked away, but I already walk away far too often to the detriment of improving my capture and processing skills!

I also saw this as an opportinity to see see how well or otherwise the image would come out using ISO 1000, as I still tend to stick to ISO 100. Now I have the shot to remind me of my visit, I thought I may as well try to improve it and practice with PP.

To this end I have cloned out a napkin and added the part of the cutlery handles it was hiding. And I have corrected the verticals although not those of the the painting's frame as it was not, and would not not normally be, flush to the wall.

So I am using this image to practice and learn.

Donald - I will definitely try your method as it uses techniques that I understand and need to practice.

Geoff - I have heard of Smart Objects but have no understanding yet of what they are when one might use them; so this must go on my "to do" list. As soon as I saw the image I realised that the reflection is very burnt out and the gradation of the burn out would make rectifying this an impossible task, but thankfully I do not crave a perfect result.

Dan & Donald - I may play with the curves adjustment approach when I have tried Donald's method.

Thank you again for your your help.

David

[DanK]

The technique you are referring to Dan is primarily aimed at a far more gentle effect than taking out the hot spot. It would take a lot of work to build up the level of darkening required to fix this image. I would be tempted to use a more robust approach, like Donald is suggesting.

that's helpful. thanks

[pschlute]

With none of the "correct" tones salvageable from the image your best bet is to use the clone tool and simply copy some dark areas of the painting on top.

[Rufus]

With none of the "correct" tones salvageable from the image your best bet is to use the clone tool and simply copy some dark areas of the painting on top.

This turned out to be the simpler solution and very effective, Peter. Happily there were a lot of dark colours to clone from.

I noticed a stray arm on the lefthand boarder and have cloned that out as well. It's not perfect, but I am pleased with the improvement acheived:



Thank you.

[William W]

Beat me to it.

The clone tool is somewhat underutilized by many, IMO.

It can be tedious, but it is an effective method in rebuilding areas and also removing unwanted material.



WW

All Images © AJ Group Pty Ltd Aust 1996~2018, WMW 1965~1996

[Manfred M]

Beat me to it.

The clone tool is somewhat underutilized by many, IMO.

It can be tedious, but it is an effective method in rebuilding areas and also removing unwanted material.

I agree 100% Bill. It is the best tool in Photoshop to perform "major surgery" on an image, but it takes time to use it (versus, say the various Content Aware tools, which tend to be quite fast to use) and it takes a lot of practice to master it. Sometimes cutting and pasting and then manipulating the piece that was extracted from the original works in this situation as well, but that is another slow process as well.