Remove Glare in Photo

[Pepperdog2]

I'm a AP newbie, and I have a photo sent to me by a friend. They would like to have the glare from the window removed or at least lessened. Is there a method to do this?

[SrPx]

There are several ways to fix this.... maybe a very rough Idea (photographers will tell you better) would be doing a lasso selection and applying a very high feather value. Then do any brightness or whatever change to tone it down. 

If it's kind of informal or among friends, and they give you "artistic freedom", I'm kind of a punk (maybe because I don't like when people tell me to do these gigs, hehe)  and once having a perfect selection , or a mask, I'd replace that with a bit of vegetation, like a garden barely seen from a window. It seems it is actually having some blinds, but the thing is totally burnt by exposure. Problem is that the contours are destroyed by the bloom, so, generating something there (other than just toning it down) might prove tricky. But I'd do it, for the fun of it...  For something serious, nope.... I'd have to talk quite with the person asking for this...

You might need to make a complex selection / mask, mixing gradients masks and feathered selections. Or just painting the mask with the brush, might be more practical. Once you have a perfect selection, you can do whatever with it: just lowering the brightness, or doing something else, some composition. (depends on the type of gig that it is)

Hmmm....yep, for this case, I'd probably just would use 'quick mask'. A brush with hardness at zero, large size and low opacity (ideally, using a pen-tablet) , and would go painting carefully that mask until I'd have what I want. Then, would do whatever I'd desire with that area.

A good video tutorial for this here: 

https://youtu.be/0FLRYlXu6O8

Also very convenient to watch :

https://youtu.be/jmPBKZMVOvU

This can come handy in some details, refining selections :

https://youtu.be/RXKEqOMK-bo

Here several methods about making selections :

https://youtu.be/F9Pvc_Pl0wY

 

But I'd definitely go for the quick masks/mask layer & compositing methods. Seems the right thing here.  

Again, these forums are crowded by photographers, they'll tell you better. I'm putting a quick solution in case no one see this in time.

Cheers,

 

[toltec]

 

The Develop Persona has actually become quite a favourite of mine for things like this. 

It is easy enough although the final quality will depend on how good you want it vs how much time you want to spend on it. That took me less than five minutes using the Develop Persona and a bit of quick cloning. Far from perfect I know but it is easy to spend absolutely ages on this sort of thing, as just about anybody here will tell you.

Load it into the Develop Persona and paint over the blown out highlights with the Overlay Paint Tool .

It does not have to be perfect because we are only going to adjust the highlights.

Using Shadows & Highlights in the Basic panel, drag the Highlights slider until the blown out areas look OK. As soon as you start to drag the slider, the red goes away so you can see what you are doing. Play around with the settings until you get a result you like, it's a matter of taste really.

I did a quick bit of cloning, mainly this bit 

which I cloned (and flipped) from the left hand side

Due to the glare, I wasn't 100% sure what the microscope thing on the table should look like, so I sort of ignored it for the purpose of a quick demonstration 

Edit. @carl123 did a brilliant job of that below.

 

 

 

 

 

[firstdefence]

My take on this, With blown out highlights there is nothing there to get back so you have to recreate it as best as you can without making it look too fake, I tried to find the Microscope but there are a lot of microscopes out there so I decided to just make the bit the guy is looking into. If you remove all of the glare it looks super naff but leaving some in kind of works.

Remove glare.afphoto

As a tongue in cheek point, the guy who is looking into the microscope, that hand looks a bit dodgy 

Tell your friend to be aware of their surroundings not just the subject 

[carl123]

18 hours ago, Pepperdog2 said:

They would like to have the glare from the window removed or at least lessened

Why not just close the curtains?

 

 

 

[toltec]

1 hour ago, carl123 said:

Why not just close the curtains?

Very clever, a nice bit of lateral thinking, and an absolutely brilliant job on the microscope 

 

But how did you know what the curtains in the office were like 

[Alfred]

6 minutes ago, toltec said:

But how did you know what the curtains were like 

He obviously didn’t know. Had he known, they wouldn’t have looked more like wallpaper than curtains!

[toltec]

 

12 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

He obviously didn’t know. Had he known, they wouldn’t have looked more like wallpaper than curtains!

Ah, I see 

I think the curtains from my office would have been better.

[carl123]

15 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

He obviously didn’t know. Had he known, they wouldn’t have looked more like wallpaper than curtains!

Well I guess you could "wallpaper" a room with them but they are definitely curtain fabric

https://www.grahamsandersoninteriors.com/fabrics/iliv/imperio/imperio-stripe-teal

 

[Alfred]

11 minutes ago, carl123 said:

Well I guess you could "wallpaper" a room with them but they are definitely curtain fabric

Yes, that definitely looks like fabric, Carl. I’m curious to know why (and how) you flattened it to look like wallpaper.

[carl123]

6 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

Yes, that definitely looks like fabric, Carl. I’m curious to know why (and how) you flattened it to look like wallpaper.

Alas, I have no more time for pedantries today, I need to take the girlfriend to the vets to have her de-wormed and I promised the dog I would take him to lunch at a new restaurant that has just opened up in the area.

Or could that be the other way around, I have not had my second coffee today as yet.

[Move Along People]

-

[IanSG]

1 hour ago, carl123 said:

Or could that be the other way around, I have not had my second coffee today as yet

You're right first time - vets do the de-worming and restaurants provide lunch.

[Pepperdog2]

Thank you one and all. I love the curtain idea as it had never occurred to me. Great Work !!!  

[SrPx]

My take at it, but.... Didn't what to do with my non Affinity apps, and as I don't have AP yet (blame the outstanding bills and my strict non allowance about changing the $ priorities, lol) and mostly because of this, because like the other day when I wanted to make an exercise (showed here) to see if AD's Pixel persona was featured enough to make pixel art for games/apps, and that was *way* successful as a test (I know now I can do pixel art with it), now wanted to check if one could do at least extremely basic retouch as well (I know this Persona is thought for concept drawing previous to doing the vectors in AD, but hey...) ...and yeepppp, this Pixel Persona can.... wildly limited compared to Affinity Photo, OBVIOUSLY, but it can do stuff.... I didn't went too far as got work to do, and also, as well, would need more tools, but to give it a try.  Is quite capable. Instead of what I mentioned earlier,... just placing like another of those panels in the door, like in the other wall (glass?) panels, imagining that light comes stronger through that central one, as anyway, that glowing light is all over the place, destroying details. So, you see "some glow", but not that football stadium light... also, the image had too much compression/low (even taking the amplified version) resolution... But was for some fast fun, anyways.   

Every day I like AD more and more....

EDIT :  Lol...  Now I notice the fix is very similar to firstdefence 's solution... hadn't realized....Anyway, the main idea was to test AD p. persona for retouch, too....

PD:  He was providing a much larger version than the forum embedded, if u click a pair of times...I'm providing the one at max res.

[firstdefence]

18 hours ago, haakoo said:

You know you'll need some more java if someone is serving you this

Ooooooh! chocolate cheerios yum!