Editing bright bald heads

[TexasPilot]

Good Morning:

I have taken a set of photos of my friend who is an artisan-blacksmith. I am really having a tough time developing with his beautiful-but-bald head as in the attached. I just can't seem to get the bright, shiny area toned down in a way that looks natural. I am using the brushes and tools to the best of my ability but falling short.

I have to really restrict any adjustment of color using color sliders because I am red-green color deficient and my use of color sliders usually ends up with results between hideous and laughable. Hence, mandatory use of the X-Rite Passport for me.

No flash was used.
Nikon D5500
Sigma 18-35, f/1.8 Art Lens
Fluorescent light.
WB and color corrected using X-Rite Passport

Thanks for any advice.

Ed
San Antonio

 

[john.jcb]

I would use the Adjustment Brush set to Burn to locally reduce the glare. Use it lightly with feathering so your edits are not noticeable.
You may also want to try the Highlight slider to take down the bright area.

 

[johnbeardy]

I suspect that area is so exposed it contains little detail. One thing you might is the dust spotting tool, probably set quite large and cloning from elsewhere on his scalp.

Or just crop it out. It'll bring more attention to his intent expression.

 

[clee01l]

When composing a photo, you always need to pay attention to light sources and reflections. If you can't eliminate the glare of the florescent light, you can do other things to mitigate the glare. The dynamic range of this photo is difficult to capture. First, you must shoot RAW. Second you probably need a bracketed shot so that you can properly expose the head and face then the dark almost black clothing. HDR can then combine the exposures for the best overall range. A polarizing filter could also block the light reflecting from the florescent back into the lens. Aside from HDR techniques, this is not something you can "fix" in post process.
As some one has suggested, the clone tool offers your best repair of this image.

 

[Anthony.Ralph]

Have you looked into changing it to a monochrome (B&W)? I quickly tested this with reasonable results; plus it looks okay with modest split tones andded to the B&W. Also the image you posted is rather saturated on my monitor and tweaking the intensity down somewhat, made the highlights less noticeable.

I speak as a shiny bonce myself!

Anthony.

 

[TexasPilot]

When composing a photo, you always need to pay attention to light sources and reflections. If you can't eliminate the glare of the florescent light, you can do other things to mitigate the glare. The dynamic range of this photo is difficult to capture. First, you must shoot RAW. Second you probably need a bracketed shot so that you can properly expose the head and face then the dark almost black clothing. HDR can then combine the exposures for the best overall range. A polarizing filter could also block the light reflecting from the florescent back into the lens. Aside from HDR techniques, this is not something you can "fix" in post process.
As some one has suggested, the clone tool offers your best repair of this image.

Hi Cletus: thanks as always. Thanks for the suggestions, insights and advice.

I did (and always) shoot in RAW and have the histogram always at the default quick-view setting. The histogram for this photo (attached) does not come even close to the right. That is what has me so bumfuzzled on this that I can't seem to work with it.

Ed

 

[TexasPilot]

I suspect that area is so exposed it contains little detail. One thing you might is the dust spotting tool, probably set quite large and cloning from elsewhere on his scalp.

Or just crop it out. It'll bring more attention to his intent expression.

Great suggestion on the crop! How does this look?

 

[johnbeardy]

Better, don't you think, but I'm notorious for chopping off the top of people's heads.

 

[TexasPilot]

Better, don't you think, but I'm notorious for chopping off the top of people's heads.

Very much so. Thanks for the suggestion. I added a little vignetting and I like that even more.

 

[Ian.B]

that works OK IMO TexasPilot :thumbsup:.
Cropping is often a great editing tool; like when we make a mistake and crop off a foot or hand or even part of a tree it often works out to just crop a bit harder or even a lot harder or make a square photo

 

[LRList001]

Good Morning:

I have taken a set of photos of my friend who is an artisan-blacksmith. I am really having a tough time developing with his beautiful-but-bald head as in the attached. I just can't seem to get the bright, shiny area toned down in a way that looks natural. I am using the brushes and tools to the best of my ability but falling short.


San Antonio

I know this isn't a reply that sits within LR, however if you also have PS, there is a plug-in that might be able to help. It is available from here:
Image Trends - ShineOff Plug-In - Automatically Removes Facial Shine and Glare
It is priced at GBP 37.87.

 

[Rich]

Several other techniques- if you have photoshop.

1) If you have psd, duplicate image on a new layer, ( Drag layer to paper sheet icon at bottom of pallate, borrow from similar areas and fill completely in- make it look as natural as can be. Now add some texture using healing brush. Now adjust the tranparency slider on this layer, till it looks like a highlight and thus natural, but retains less chrome mirror effect! LOL (Note opasity of layer settings 0%, 76%, and 100% effect)

2) If there is detail, but adjusting is difficult, adjust image overall- not concerned about highlight, and send image to photoshop, now go back into lightroom and adjust just for the highlight, bring back detail, now re-open into photoshop, you'll have two images in psd, one for bulk of image and one with fixed highlight, select all highlight image, copy, and go to blown out highlight image file, paste , you'll have the fixed highlight in a layer above the blown out one, but it will be hiding the bulk exposed image... give this upper layer a mask to hide everything, the mask will be black. Now slowly paint in the highlight area with a soft brush set to 7-10% white ON MASK-not image, and it will reveal your fixed highlight incrementally, do this till it looks natural. This is reversible,as you are working in the mask, if you go too far, paint back with black or adjust layer slider. .

In future, if you have a scrim or a 5 in 1 hoop reflector that has a translucent fabric, place it directly over anybody you want to have less harsh- yet natural highlights- inside or out, and expose for the highlight, you'll get a dark overall image, but lightroom is magic at coaxing out detail in a shadows, best if you work with the 16bit raw image.

Hue, was because highlight took on a bluish tinge- which looked unhealthy- i just warmed it up. Could do this any number of ways.

 

[tspear]

Considering my shiny head, I guess I need to move learning Photoshop up the TODO list.
Oh well...

 

[Rich]

Considering my shiny head, I guess I need to move learning Photoshop up the TODO list.
Oh well...

Means you have higher levels of testosterone is all- my friend says his get polished from high speed u-turns under the sheets. I personally have a Texas beard, lots of wide open spaces- what you see is all i can grow... i have always wanted to grow a full beard, but all i get is a goatee...See, grass is always greener.

My description took 10 times longer then the actual fix... it was a minor one that can be applied most often to foreheads, noses, chins, etc. anywhere you get a glint. There is also a thing called frequency separation, that's what they use to models skin perfect. You separate the texture from the tones using a high pass filter. Sounds like rocket science- it isn't, but if you are charging for it, you make it sound like ROCKET SCIENCE ! LOL ... look up frequency separation on youtube under phlearn.

 

[tspear]

Means you have higher levels of testosterone is all- my friend says his get polished from high speed u-turns under the sheets. I personally have a Texas beard, lots of wide open spaces- what you see is all i can grow... i have always wanted to grow a full beard, but all i get is a goatee...See, grass is always greener.

My description took 10 times longer then the actual fix... it was a minor one that can be applied most often to foreheads, noses, chins, etc. anywhere you get a glint. There is also a thing called frequency separation, that's what they use to models skin perfect. You separate the texture from the tones using a high pass filter. Sounds like rocket science- it isn't, but if you are charging for it, you make it sound like ROCKET SCIENCE ! LOL ... look up frequency separation on youtube under phlearn.

Rich,

The list of stuff to learn is growing faster then I can take things off the list.