Remove Shine
How to remove shine or remove the glare from a nose or forehead or
cheek can be a frustrating and baffling problem.
Once you know what to do to remove the shine, however, you will be all
over those shiny and glary pictures you have tucked away in an obscure
folder somewhere on your computer.
This technique is particularly suited to a Wacom tablet (Graphire,
Bamboo or Intuos) because of the pressure sensitivity of the tablets.
It is best to set the primary Photoshop tool in this technique (Clone
Tool) to change opacity with pressure. This will provide you with
precise control as you remove the shiny parts of your chosen photograph.
Here is how to remove shine using Photoshop. (This will also
work with Photoshop Elements).
Removing Forehead Shine
This is a picture of my buddy, Gilles. I took
this on a hot afternoon in Phoenix and Gilles was sweating a bit on his
forehead - hence the shiny bits.
 Here are the simple steps to
remove that shine ...
- Load your picture in Photoshop.
- Create a new layer either by click the new layer icon
in the Layers Palette or by selecting Layer > New Layer
in the
menu bar. Do this in the really unlikely event that you mess
up and have to start over. It is easy to throw a layer in the
trash and you may want to use the built in properties of your layer
later - trust me on this.
- Change the
Blending Mode to Darken (this is the real secret).
- Select either the Healing
Brush Tool or the Clone
Tool and make sure that Use All Layers is
selected. I prefer the Clone
Tool because it can be set for pen pressure with a Wacom tablet whereas
the Healing Brush Tool is not pressure sensitive.
- Alt/Option
Click on a dark part of the picture that, in your
estimation, will be as close as possible to the color you need to cover
the shine. Move your brush over the area you would like to
replace and start
painting away the shine.
If you are using a Wacom
Tablet (and you
really should be, you know) set the brush to change the opacity with
pressure.
- When you are satisfied with your work you can fine
tune your finished product by adjusting the Layer Opacity.
These are the pictures of Gilles before and after cloning bout to
remove shine.
|
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| Gilles with a shiny forehead |
Gilles with the shine gone |
Remove Shine On
Glasses
How to remove shine from someones glasses (caused by a flash, for
instance),
can be a real problem. In many situations the shine
completely obliterates one eye which makes cloning - well - almost
impossible.
This is much more challenging than it is to remove shine from a nose or
forehead and it is very satisfying when you do it well!
Take this image, for instance ...
There are two nasty flash spots that need fixing - we will start with
the right eye.
To fix the right eye I used pixels from the left eye.
Ya, I know it sounds crazy but it works.
Here's how to do it. The right eye is pretty much all shine
at the tear duct area but the left eye is fine in the same
area. What you do is make a selection of the good part of the
left eye and move it to the right eye.
- Make the selection (the yellow patch above - it
will be moved to the other eye) and copy it (Ctrl-C or Cmd-C) and then
paste it on a new layer. This is a 'patch' and it would be a
good idea to give your new layer a name because you will end up with
lotsa layers by the time this is finished.
- Turn off the background layers so you can see
what is happening on the next step. The only thing visible
will be your little patch.
- Zoom in on the selected area, (making sure you
are on the layer you just made) and click the 'patch' with the Magic
Wand to select the patch. In my case I had to make two
selections to get the whole patch selected - hold the Shift Key down
while making the second selection.
- Now go to Edit
> Transform > Flip
Horizontal - the patch is in the correct
orientation. Accept
the transform at the top of your screen.
- Select the Move tool, turn on your background
layer, make the patch layerreduce shine
 transformactive and drag your
little patch over to where it needs to be. It will probably
need to be rotated so go to Edit > Transform > Rotate and
move your cursor to one corner of the box and drag the selection into
the best position you can. You can just tuck your patch in
exactly where it needs to be. This part won't be perfect but
it is a good step in the right direction!
- Deslect (Ctrl-D or Cmd-D) and inspect your
work. No doubt the little patch will be the wrong shade or
luminosity so now that needs fixing.
Clean Up
The patch is an improvement but not perfect so we need to clean it up.
- The patch is too dark
- There is something funny below the
patch
- There is a glare on the rim
- The eyelashes disappear on the left
side of the eye
These items need to be fixed to make the right eye shine go away.
Fixing up the patch
- First try to decrease the opacity of the layer
to see what happens. If the results are not satisfactory then go to the
next step.
Unsatisfactory means
you lower the opacity to get the patch looking like it should and the
dang shine is showing through - not good.
- If that doesn't work then add a Layer Mask to
your new layer, set your default colors by pressing the D key and set
Black as the foreground color (hit the X key if it is not).
Open the Brushes Palette and set Other Dynamics to Pen Pressure (if you
are using a tablet). If you are doing this with a mouse you
will have to change the Opacity setting manually.
- Now work around the patch with very light
pressure until you are satisfied with the results. If you do
something you don't like hit the X key to bring white to the foreground
and paint over your perceived error.
Make sure you are zoomed
in really close and work little areas at a time. This is very
fiddly and exacting and using a Bamboo or Intuos makes it much, much
easier and the end results are worth it!
Below the patch
There is still some of the original glare and shine from the original
picture irght above the left side of the eye and below the patch.
- Create a new layer to work this area.
Make sure that Use All
Layer s is checked.
- Zoom in really close on the left side of the
eye and do an evaluation.
- A small amount of low opacity smudging of the
patch with the Smudge
Tool may be helpful.
- Grab the Clone
Tool and set the Brush
Dynamics
to Other Dynamics
(Opacity). Make the brush really small with
a soft edge. Select the Source somewhere in the patch and very
carefully remove the left over glare below the patch and above the eye.
The Rim
This is a straight forward Clone job to remove shine on a New
Layer.
- Zoom in really close and set the brush to a
small hard edge tip. It will be easier if you uncheck Aligned
so every time you lift the pen the Source returns to the original
position you set.
- Some light smudging may be necessary when you
finish.
- The glare off of the rim also leaks onto the
skin so this needs to be cloned out as well.
The Eyelash
The eyelash was fixed using the same method as the original patch on
another layer.
- Select the good eyelash on the right of the eye
and copy it to a new layer.
- Turn off all of the layers except the eyelash
layer and select it with the Magic Wand. Rotate the eyelash
with Edit > Transform > Rotate and move it into the right
position.
- If it looks strange (mine did) I used a very
small eraser to clean it up (mine had a nasty bulge where it shouldn't
be).
- Zoom in and out and check your work often.
Here is the completed right eye ...
The left eye
The same basic procedures will apply to the left eye as the right
eye. Here's how it looked after messing with it ...
It is much better but the too flat so we need to do some adjusting with
Curves.
Make a rectangular selection over the part of the eye that needs fixing
and then create a new Curves
Adjustment Layer.
Adjust the contrast a small
amount ... this is my curves adjustment.
A funny thing with this adjustment is that the small rectangular
selection is now brighter than the rest of the area and it can be seen
so this has to be fixed as well.
 |
 |
| Result of Curves Adjustment |
Curves Layer With Layer Mask |
The great things is that the Curves Adjustment Layer comes with its own
Layer Mask
so you can easily fix it.
Set the foreground/background colors to black and white (press the D
key) and make sure black is the foreground. Select a soft
edge brush and set the Brush Palette to change Opacity with pressure
and then paint around the visible box with varying pressure.
That's it - there are a lot of steps remove shine from glasses and your
image will probably
present different obstacles. The procedures outlined here are
a starting point but they will work well in most cases.
Video
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