Dave McLean Photography: How to Prevent & Edit out Reflections on Glasses

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How to Prevent & Edit out Reflections on Glasses

via Digital Photography School by Elizabeth Halford on 7/16/10

Subjects who wear eye glasses can offer a unique difficulty for photographers. First, there's the dilemma of whether they should wear them or not (will they not feel & look like themselves without them? Are they hiding fabulous eyes behind those glasses?) And then there's the problem of glare and reflection. An attentive photographer will pay attention to this factor, but it does cause issues and where a photo might be perfectly composed and lit, but a little glare in the glasses can throw the whole thing off.

{An Ounce of Prevention}

So first, I offer a few tips to prevent glare so you can see those eyes. Then, I'll give you a quick little tip for how I use editing software to soften the blow of glare when it does happen.

All those tips for creating great catchlights? Forget 'em. Reflectors aimed at the eyes, facing a light source…all these techniques will only show up as mirror-like reflections in the glass.
When using artificial or studio lighting, have your subject turn away from the lights just a tad and pay attention to what's going on in the glasses.
As if pop-up flash wasn't already a no-no, it's even more so when your subject is wearing glasses
A rather strange suggestion is to have your subjects tilt the glasses downward only 1/2 an inch (just push them up from where they rest on their ears). This tiny bit of angle and make a huge difference. In the same manner, you can also experiment with having them tilt their head or the angle from which you're shooting.

{A Pound of Cure}

If you couldn't avoid glare or didn't realise it was happening, there's a rather easy fix you can do in any editing program which allows for work with layers in your image. If you troll the web, you'll find a few ways to edit out glare and no one particular method is a cure-all method. You'll have to use the tools in your editing arsenal to draw on your creativity and what you know to do the trick. For the image below, these are the steps I took to remove the umbrella glare.

Original Image:

1. I used the healing brush tool on 'replace' mode with a very soft edged brush to replace the reflections using a sample of the area directly next to the reflection. In progress using the brush:

2. I sized down the brush and resampled using the black eye liner. I used the brush to draw on new liner, resampling the brush continuously throughout the process.