[skalie]

(Photoshop CS2)

I was wondering if anyone knows of a handy method of removing the reflection of a camera flash from a pic, specifically this pic.....



....now if it was just a matter of a red eye or two, it wouldn't be a problem

[jfobart]

It's going to be tricky for a few reasons:

1. your flash was the only light source, and it was a small on-camera flash- meaning it isn't big enough to evenly light the whole door. So the light is falling off (gradating) towards the edges...making a simple clone very complex if you just wish to minize the reflection.

2. it's a slightly wide-angle shot- you can see the door frame is not straight- meaning that to again do a quick clone of the door frame to remove the flash reflection from the door frame is much more difficult because you're now working on a curve.

I'd say just try using the clone tool, obviously on a 2nd layer above the 'background'. Keep trying at various bruch intensities and opacities...it might take a few tries, but hopefully you'll get some worthwhile results after some experimentation.

Good luck!

[skalie]

Thanks for the reply jfobart.

What I ended up doing, and in the world of shade tree mechanics such a method would be termed a "bodge", was select and cut the bottom half of the door, move it to a new layer and align and skew it into place at the top of the door, then lower that layers opacity way down, to about 40% I believe.

All was needed then was to erase the door handle from the "mask" layer, and I ended up with a, well, less obvious camera flash, looks more like a reflection from a tamer light source, good enough for the web, I hope. I can see where it's been "bodged", but hopefully if your not looking for it you won't see it.

So there's no hidden feature in Photoshop for that type of situation then, oh well, will be some day I guess.