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Category: Available Light in Photography

Photography Question 

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How to Fix Lighting Flares in Digital Photograph


 
 
I have several digital pictures of a concert. The flares that glare out from the lights is not too bad. But in some instances it is just way to overwhelming on the image. I was wondering how to correct the white hot spots from the lights in the picture - either removing them or toning them down - without the final image looking all hacked up.
Attached is an example of what I'm trying to accomplish, if it's possible. Notice the white hot spot created by the light in the photograph. I'm pretty sure there is not much that can be done to remove it. But is there a way of toning it down so that it doesn't seem so intense? Thanks in advance.


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July 06, 2004

 

Wing Wong 		  Well, the image you have posted with the question isn't really light flare, but a lot of diffuse light. There is some kind of "fog" in the air which is dispersing the light from the spotlights. This is resulting in your whiting out. Some suggestions would include moving and changing your angle to not include a direct blast from the light source. If you can't do that, you can use a graduated ND filter with the darkened end towards the light source and the undarkened end towards the crowd. This will cut down on the light from the light source and let you expose the crowd properly. The grad filter is used by landscape photographers to even out setting sun and letting the details from the darkening landscape come through.


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July 06, 2004

 
- Gregory LaGrange

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Gregory LaGrange's Gallery 		  It's not the smoke; it's including the light source in your picture. The other lights are doing the same thing, just that one is bigger and pointing more directly at you. With feathering on the lasso or eliptical outline tool, you can darken it with levels, curves, and contrast. But since it's so hot, the brightest part of the white will get a color shift to yellow.
That's what happens trying to go too far with darkening highlights with no detail in digital. You can only do a little bit of darkening before it gets too contrasty and bad color.
To remove it, try the clone tool. Clone some of the darker areas with the smoke, and try to make it look like part of it rises up into that area.


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July 07, 2004

 

Michael Kaplan 		 
 
 
There is an easy way to make minor adjustments that will improve the photo. This is what I did using Photoshop but you can do similar with other editing programs.

I used magic wand to select the white part; tolerance 40.
Make sure there is nothing else selected by ALT clicking on anything else of similar colors that was selected.
I then feathered the selection by 5
I then adjusted the Hue/Saturation.
I made the selection darker by sliding the lightness slider to the left. I used -14.
I also moved the hue slider to the left to -30 but all these adjustments are arbitrary and you can make any adjustment you think looks good.


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July 13, 2004

 

Gail Cimino 		  In my experience with large white spots like this, Photoshop adjustments work best after blurring the area, if you don't mind that effect. You could use the blurring tool selectively, or select the whole ceiling area and apply a gaussian blur. Then try burning just the whitest area, or any of the other solutions recommended above.


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July 20, 2004

 

John A. Lind 		  Wing's correct that there's smoke or dust and that is causing some of the effect, but it's only very secondary. The overwhelming primary one is the lens flare Gregory mentions from aiming directly at the light. While there may be some things you can do "post-processing" to try to fix this, you cannot get back the detail that was there.

The best "fix" is in the future. In addition to what Wing mentions about watching the lighting dirction and your camera direction to avoid this . . .
1. Use a lens hood!
2. Keep the lens front clean (clean it properly to avoid microscopic scuffing which *will* flare severely). A dusty lens objective will cause flare also.
3. If a light like this is unavoidable in the photo, compose to get it toward an edge or corner.

-- John Lind


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July 24, 2004

 
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