Why is there a light around your head?

October 31, 2006 5:23 AM

A portrait taken with a semi glossy surface behind the subject now has an odd 'halo' effect, how do I edit this out?

The material is pseudo-wood paneling on a desk and right around the subjects head, there is a glare from the flash. Experimenting with the healing brush and clone stamp gets me less than acceptable results. What's the best way to remove this with photoshop?
While I'm asking, what are some good places to go to learn more advanced photography and image editing skills? My googlefu turns up mostly the same articles regurgitated over and over.......

posted by IronLizard to media & arts (2 comments total)

There is no real easy way unfortunately. Just start the arduous task of using the lasso and magic wand on the background. Copy it to another layer to airbrush and/or replace it.

Always try to be aware of your background especially when using flash. If you have glass or shiny walls behind the subject, angle yourself so as not to get direct glare.
posted by JJ86 at 5:28 AM on October 31, 2006

The best way to get rid of this is by using an "imaginary color"

• Switch to LAB mode (Image > Mode > LAB)

• Create a new empty layer and set the blending mode to "Color"

• Switch to the eyedropper and select a color that is close to the whited out halo but still retains some color.

• With the regular brush tool, paint over the halo, extending into the non-halo parts. The halo should darken and colorize at the same time. Touch up this layer however you want, then flatten, convert back to RGB & you're done.


The way this works is that in LAB, color and contrast are separated. In RGB, anything that has more color than white is also darker than white, but in LAB you can have something that is as light as white, but also as green/red/whatever as you'd like. However that color can't be shown to you in RGB (or anything else really) so Photoshop is forced to also darken at the same time. Thats okay. It has to be darker to have any color but if we'd had to darken it by hand it would have looked fake.

I didn't come up with this, Dan Margulis did. If you want to skip all the crapshoot tutorials go straight to him and his Color Theory mailing list. He has a new version of Professional Photoshop coming out in December. Every chapter will blow your mind and you will wonder why nobody else seems to know these secrets. I swear.
posted by Brainy at 6:13 AM on October 31, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]