It’s easy to get lost in the moment during a photoshoot, only noticing details you missed when you finally get home and start editing. Glare and reflections in glasses are commonly missed and fixing these mistakes can get complicated. Here are a few techniques that you can use to remove glare from glasses.
The easiest way to remove glare is during the photoshoot is either with lighting or a reflector. (You can also take a photo of your subject wearing their glasses and then asking them to stay very still while a friend removes their glasses, then retaking a photo without them and layering and masking out the reflections in post production.) We know that this isn’t always possible as time is of the essence.
Photoshop Beta – AI Generate Fill
Photoshop Beta works the same as Photoshop, it simply lets users test up-and-coming features like AI generate fill.
How to download Photoshop Beta:
Open your Creative Cloud, under “Apps” and “Categories” you’ll see various options, click on “Beta Apps” to see all the different available Beta apps, for now we will only need the Photoshop Beta app, it’s icon looks like the normal Photoshop icon but with a white wired background.
Once the app has been installed successfully, you can open it as well as the image you would like to edit. Using any selection tool (we’ve noticed that the Marquee tool works best) you can select the part of the image you would like to edit, once selected, there will be a pop-up menu – “Contextual Task Bar” – where you can type what you would like to change, click on “Generate” and watch the magic happen.
If this menu does not appear, go to your Windows Tab, click on “Contextual Task Bar” and it should open up. If the Contextual Task Bar is not available it might be because the latest version of Beta is not compatible with your device.
Please note that when you’re typing the changes you’d like AI to edit, you should be very specific and detailed. It takes practice and a few attempts to ensure you get the best results.
Adobe Photoshop – Manual
If you feel that Beta isn’t working for you, you can remove glare and reflections manually with Adobe Photoshop. The following method is only possible if you have details in die glasses and it’s not glared out completely.
Open your image in Photoshop and make a duplicate layer of the background layer so that you don’t work destructively. (Keyboard shortcut – Cmd J)
Adjust your brightness
Remove the colour in your image so that it’s not distracting – click on the adjustment layer and select solid colour fill, select a colour with zero saturation (any grey) and change the blending mode to colour.
Go back to the background layer, click on the adjustment layer, select curves, make a mark in the middle of the graph and drag it down until you can see your subject’s detail and not the reflection or until the highlights start looking normal. Click on the mask and invert it (Cmd I), using a soft brush with a flow between 2-3%, brush the highlighted areas to match your surrounding areas.
Create a blank layer above the curves layer and change its blending mode to “Soft Light”, using a soft brush with a flow between 1-2%, paint with white over areas you would like to highlight and black over areas you would like to darken.
Match your colour
Turn off the grey layer and you’ll see that the glare is less, but the colours don’t completely match. Create a new blank layer, change the blending mode to colour, use a soft brush with a flow between 5-10% press “alt” to use the eye dropper tool to sample the desired colour and gradually paint over the areas that need retouching.
(When using the brush ensure your sample settings are set to “current and below” and the sample size is 3×3 / 5×5 or more.)
If you feel that your subjects eyes look dull and strange, click on adjustment layers and use curves to enhance them, invert your mask and brush in the subject’s eyes to ensure that it’s the only edited area.
Clean up
You might have a few rough edges that should be cleaned up. Create a new blank layer and use the healing brush tool, press “alt” to use the eye dropper tool to sample the desired area and fix all the edges in the area.
(When using the healing brush tool ensure your sample settings are set to current and below, Source – sampled, Mode – normal)
If you want a slight glare you can select all your layers and change the opacity to retrieve slight glare or detail.
Now that you know how to remove glare and reflections from your subject glasses, you can enhance your images comfortably and provide striking results to your clients.
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