Eliminate Shine

The correct techniques to eliminate shine (sweaty skin, light reflections on a nose, etc) is a perplexing problem that people face with their digital photos ...

and you know what - it's really not that hard to eliminate shine with Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. The techniques involve the Clone Tool, perhaps the Object Remover, some layers, maybe a selection and a lot of a care.

The shiny surfaces really are areas of blown out highlights with no detail whatsoever at the worst and some detail in others areas.

Original Picture

This picture is typical of the problem. There are highlights on the bridge of the nose, on the side of the nose, at the end of the nose as well as on the forehead.

How to eliminate shine

Make a copy of your original by right clicking on the background layer and psp layers

selecting Duplicate and then create a new Raster Layer (give the new layer a name so you can keep track of your work).

Activate the Nose Tip layer and select the Clone Tool. In this case both the Aligned and Use All Layers Boxes are checked.

If you're using a Wacom tablet set the pen pressure to Opacity in the Brush Variance Palette.

If you are using a mouse then lower the Opacity of the Clone Brush.

Zoom in really close and select a Source Point (the non-shiny pixels) by right clicking on the image and then very carefully start cloning away the shine. Keep your brush small and take your time (change the brush size by pressing the ALT key, left clicking and drag left to make the brush smaller).

Here's the nose before and after cloning - see - this technique to eliminate shine really works!


Before Cloning	After Cloning

The exact same procedure can be followed to eliminate the shine from the bridge of her nose as well.

Create a new layer and name it Bridge then gently clone away the shine from the surrounding pixels. Take care to blend in the pixels to prevent you work from looking amateurish - you know what I mean. Match and blend the areas.

Here is the bridge before and after.


Bridge Before	Bridge After

This is the tried and true way of eliminating those annoying shiny spots but PSP Pro Photo X2 has another fabulous way to fix shiny spots ...

Object Remover

In some cases you will run into a situation like the area above her right eyebrow, that is, a large area of burned out pixels that needs fixing.

You can approach it the same way as the other shiny areas with a new layer and carefully cloning in some detal- or - you can try someting different.

The something different is to create a patch to cover the offending area. Luckliy you have Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 so you also have the Object Replacer which is really amazing.

The Object Remover tool lives with the Clone Tool in the tool bar and when you select it you will see these controls at the top of the screen.

Object Remover Controls

The function of the Object Remover is fully explained in the Learning Centre and here is a brief overview:

The Lasso selects the area you want to replace.
The Square selects the area you want to use to fill the area selected by the Lasso.
The Opacity and Feather are self explanatory.
The Check Mark applies the 'object removing'.
The Back Arrow undoes what you just did.

To use the Object Remover simply make a loose selection around the offending area (shiny skin in this case). When you are done click the Square Box and it will appear on your screen. It is huge so you will need to downsize it to about the same size as your selection.

Object Remover

Move the small box to an area that is similar in hue and brightness to what you want the area to be and then click the checkmark.

If you are not pleased with the results simply undo the last command, move the box to a different area and try again. You can adjust the Opacity and Feathering to help.

Use the Clone Tool to do any final tuneups to the area. In addition I added a small amount of Noise (Gaussian and monochrome) before I de-selected.


Before Object Remover (forehead)	After Object Remover (forehead)

Once you get the hang of using the Object Remover you will fly through it with great results.

So there you go - two simple methods for removing shine from a nose or forehead or pretty much anything.

Return to Paint Shop Pro from PSP Eliminate Shine.

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