Flash photography and eye glasses

[JoelKlein]

Hi,
In a portrait studio with softboxes and the subject has eye glasses, it’s almost impossible to prevent reflections. In best case the grids are visible on the subjects glasses.

Any ideas I can try? Or there is nothing to try…

Thanks

 

[Nimi]

Hi,
In a portrait studio with softboxes and the subject has eye glasses, it’s almost impossible to prevent reflections. In best case the grids are visible on the subjects glasses.

Any ideas I can try? Or there is nothing to try…

Thanks

Photoshop Generative Fill. Brush the reflections, type Remove.

 

[JoelKlein]

Photoshop Generative Fill. Brush the reflections, type Remove.

PS ai introduces fake stuff into the scene

 

[Archibald]

You can adjust the temples a bit above the ears instead of on the ears. That angles the lenses down and that might be sufficient to avoid bad reflections. If not overdone, it can look natural.

Careful posing and arranging of the lights will help. (Angle of reflection, etc.)

I've heard of removing the lenses from the frames, but that seems excessive.

A little bit of reflection should be acceptable.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

 

[BlackRockArt]

Hi,
In a portrait studio with softboxes and the subject has eye glasses, it’s almost impossible to prevent reflections. In best case the grids are visible on the subjects glasses.

Any ideas I can try? Or there is nothing to try…

Thanks

Hi Joel

The eye glasses reflection used to be a real pain back in the days, later on I have learned to direct the models to turn their heads slightly or use a longer focal length, usually I could avoid reflection completely.

Ditto @Archibald

Oliver

 

[dabhand16]

@JoelKlein

Check out Photoshop Cafe

There might be other videos by him with different techniques too.

 

[SCoombs]

It's often possible to eliminate by having the head at the right angle.

If that isn't desirable or possible, then as long as the reflection isn't obstructing the pupils, it can be fairly easily removed using a variety of methods in Photoshop. You mention "fake stuff" above, but the reality of portrait photography is that some small amount of "fake stuff" is usually going to be present - for instance, the skin patch covering up a pimple removed is fake, as is the soft texture that's usually applied to the skin. I'm generally opposed to fake stuff in photos, but there's a big difference between something which totally changes the reality of the photo and a few small patches of "fake" that you get when touching up blemishes, removing glare, etc.

One other possibility that you might regard as less fake is that I usually ask people with glasses to remove them for one photo so that just in case glare causes some more significant problems I can use the photo with no glasses to fill in the area inside the frames. Do your main edits however you normally do on the photo with glasses, then copy those edits onto the no glasses photo. Open the two photos in Photoshop and then paste the no-glasses photo as a new layer onto the glasses photo. Align the photos - either use auto-align or if that doesn't work temporarily change the opacity of the top layer to 50% so you can visually line them up. Then make a mask on one layer and brush in the area you need to get rid of glare in.

 

[DRwyoming]

Any ideas I can try?

A lot can be done by changing the lighting angles, especially keeping the studio lights well off axis and high. Pretty good discussion and examples here: https://www.joeedelman.com/photographing-people-with-glasses

 

[Nimi]

You can change the pose (and mess up composition), move the glasses (and have goofy, unnatural portrait), move the lights (and change the mood of the photograph completely), or do a minor fix in post.

I'm all for getting it right in camera, but not at the expense of compromising the intent. Going into a session, I have a mental image of what the final image would look like. I start with composition, then lights, then I shoot a few tethered and see if I can easily fix things like glare, brightness at edge of frame, etc, then shoot. The rest is relegated to post.

 

[RAWky]

Just ask to push the arms of the glasses up over the ear - to change the angle of the glasses. Does not need a lot to lift.

 

[TurtleCat]

Back in the day when I did more portraits one of the recommendations from pros was to have a selection of empty glasses frames. That way the person can select one they like and it has no glass to create no distortions around the temples and no reflections. It's a good way to go if you're going to be doing lots of headshots.

 

[JoelKlein]

Thank you so much everyone for your support and input. I should have mentioned that we mostly photograph kids in our studio. Kids have a very short attention span…