How to remove glare from glasses in phone photos?
I photographed a friend and the camera flash ended up reflecting in his glasses. Can this be fixed in a photo editing app, or do I have to retake the shot?
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★ Best answer
If the shot is really cool, don't rush with editing. Try reshoot first without flash or from a different angle - the flash reflects in the glasses precisely because it's pointing straight at the face.
But if you don't have time to reshoot, open Healing brush in Snapseed or Lightroom and just paint over the glare by copying adjacent areas of the glass - it usually looks more natural than using some filter.
The Healing Brush tool in Lightroom or Snapseed will do the trick if the glare doesn't take up half the lens. The thing is, the app copies texture from the surrounding areas and stretches it over the problem zone - it looks pretty natural, especially if there's a uniform surface around the glare (like a regular glasses frame).
The technique is simple: you open the photo in Lightroom, turn on the Healing Tool, adjust the brush size so it's slightly bigger than the glare, and go over it a few times. Then you point out a donor zone nearby - the app will pick where to copy from on its own. In Snapseed it's similar, except the tool is called Healing. If the glare is huge and super bright and takes up half your face - then yeah, reshoot it. But if it's just a small reflection, you can definitely clean it up in a couple of minutes.
A tip for next time: when shooting with flash, try positioning yourself at an angle so the light hits your glasses from the side or slightly from above, not straight on. Or ask your friend to tilt their head forward a bit.
Retaking it is easier and the quality will be better, but if the shot is really good, you can try to fix it.
I use Snapseed or Lightroom - they have a Clone or Healing tool where you can paint over the glare by copying the neighboring pixels. Though if the glare is big and really white, the result might look unnatural, because there will be some reflections on the glasses anyway.
The main thing is not to overdo it and stop while it still looks normal.
You can fix it if the glare isn't too bad. I had this situation once - was shooting a guy in glasses, tried different angles at first and turned off the flash, but there was still a slight reflection in the original. Snapseed saved the day: the "Healing" tool took care of it in a minute by copying the texture from the glass next to it.
The key thing is the glare has to be smaller than the actual lens, otherwise you'll see that texture was pasted in from somewhere else. If half the lens is all bright and shiny - yeah, that's when it's actually easier to just reshoot than mess around with editing.
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