6 Easy Ways To Get Rid of Glasses Glare in Photos
Do you struggle taking pictures of people wearing glasses, because when you do, you always seem get the dreaded “glasses glare”?
Then this is for you!
There are two main strategies for taking pictures of people with glasses - the first is to try to first avoid getting glare in the glasses in the first place, and if that fails, the second strategy is to fall back to removing the glare in editing.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to studiously remove glasses glare in editing, especially if there is more than one image (for example if you’ve taken multiple photos for a family session, or a member of your family wears them so it’s a constant occurrence) so I always first look for ways to avoid getting glasses glare in the first place.This is by far the easiest option, not to mention the least time-consuming!
But, let’s face it, we won’t get it right 100% of the time, which it’s always useful to have the sneaky back-door option of removing it in Photoshop :-)
So today, I’m going to share some tips and tricks with you to help you avoid glasses glare in pictures the first place, along with how you can get rid of those pesky reflections in Photoshop.
1 - Watch your angle to avoid the glare
The main thing to bear in mind when it comes to avoiding glasses glare in photos is the LIGHT.
Light will always reflect off shiny surfaces, and of course, that’s exactly what glasses are - big shiny surfaces ripe for getting reflections and glare.
That’s why with all our in-camera only solutions, it’s all about paying attention the light, and how it hitting our subject, so the first (and most important thing) to keep in mind is the angle of your subject to the light.
When photographing people, we can use front light, especially in beauty portraits, or 45 or 90 degree light, which gives a bit of shadow in to add depth and dimension, but also great light on our subject.
Regardless of whether we use front or side light, as photographers we are always taught to look for the catchlights, because we always want to see some in our subject’s eyes!
You can see catchlights in the eyes below:
Unfortunately, when someone is wearing glasses, it’s the GLASS that picks up the light instead of the eyes, so instead of gorgeous sparkly eyes that are full of light and life, you get a wall of reflections instead! (Not quite so attractive in our photos)
That’s why when your subject is wearing glasses, we need to forget everything we’ve learnt so far about getting light into your subjects eyes, and instead AVOID a situation where you would get catchlights.
You can absolutely still light your subject with front or directional light, but you need to pay attention to where the light is falling, and the reflections that the glasses are picking up.
You’ll then need to change an angle - either your shooting position, or more likely, change the direction your subject is facing.
Generally speaking, move their head a little bit AWAY from the light to remove the glare. So for example, instead of having your subject turn slightly toward the window, have them angle their head so they are turned slightly away from it.
If you look at this example below, it’s only the lady on the bottom right who has glare in her glasses, because she is turned slightly TOWARD the light.
However, by turning her head slightly AWAY from the light, most, if not all, of the glasses glare has gone!
Even just asking the subject to dip their chin a little can remove the reflections and glare, so it doesn’t have to be a massive change in direction or angle.
If you look at these two photos below - the one on the right. has less glasses glare just because the subject tilted their head down a teeny tiny smidgden.
Its a slight change, but it can make all the difference.
The key is that you need to pay attention to where the light is hitting the glass, and then have your subject turn away from the light until you don’t see it anymore!
2 - Tilt the glasses
This is closely related to no 1 on our list here, because it’s still about the angle of the glasses to the light.
Another simple fix is instead of moving your subject’s head, you can have them simply tilt the glasses slightly so that they are not on the same level as your light source. Changing the angle of the glasses, but keeping the head in the same position, can be enough to reduce or remove glasses glare.
(As a side note, you don’t always need to remove glare completely - just so that it is not over the eyeball, where it is much more difficult to deal with in editing, and simply looks more distracting)
3 - Use backlight
Another solution - and yes, yes, it’s still about the angle of light - is to change the direction of light completely, and instead of using front or side light, change it so that the light is BEHIND your subject, and you the photographer are shooting into the light.
Using backlight will reduce the amount of light hitting the glasses, and therefore reduce glasses glare.
Again, normally in backlight we might look for a reflector to “bounce” light back into our subject’s eyes, but when our subject is wearing glasses, this will simply bounce the light onto the frames, and give us reflections and glare again! (If that happens, you can go back to no1 and no2 of our list!)
Using backlight can be a particularly good option for younger children who won’t pay the blindest bit of attention to you when you ask them to tilt their head in one direction or another!
It’s also great for more lifestyle or documentary images like the one below, where you don’t want to be continually asking your subject to tilt their head one way or another!
4 - Remove the glasses completely
If the person doesn’t wear glasses all the time, then a nice simple solution is just to take them off for the portraits!
However if the person always wears glasses it wouldn’t look like a true portrait to take them off (seeing my mother without glasses would just look plain weird!) in which case, I wouldn’t even suggest it.
I would also be careful of asking people to take their glasses off (especially children) because it can sound like you are saying they are more attractive without them than with them, which is absolutely NOT true, but they maybe don’t know or understand that it’s an issue with getting reflections rather than anything else!
So, I’d only really go with this option if the person only wears them sometimes (and also therefore doesn’t need them) and you can simply say that you want to mix things up by taking pictures with and without glasses, so that you have options for both.
5 - Do an “eye swap” by merging two images
The first one requires a bit of foresight when shooting, because you need to take TWO pictures of the person; one with glasses, and one without.
You then do a swap of the eyes (like you would a head swap!) so that you are taking the eyes from the image taken without the glasses, and merging that into the image taken WITH the glasses.
This really only works if you take the images in the same spot, and in the same lighting, and at the same angle - so you can’t merge two images of the same person taken at different times for example.
6 - Edit out the glare
The final solution is for when you didn’t get it right in camera, by tilting the angle of the head, the glasses, or changing the direction of the light, and you didn’t manage to get two images (one with or one without) to merge together, and that is to edit out the glasses glare by using a mixture of dodge and burn, healing and patching, and blend modes.
If you have removed the majority of the glare when shooting (by making sure when photographing that any reflections do not fall over the eyeball and are minimal) it shouldn’t be too difficult to remove the remainder in either Lightroom, or if you need the more advanced pixel editing tools, Photoshop. (You get them BOTH in the Photography Plan from Adobe at just $9.99 per month!)
If the glare IS over the eyeball then you can probably still do something with Photoshop, it might just not be perfect :-)
Check out this video tutorial from PiXimperfect that shows you this in action.
If this is beyond your capabilities, or you just don’t have the patience or time for it (that would be me) then there are retouching services out there that will be able to do this for you for a fee. Unfortunately I don’t know much since I’ve never used them, but for one photo it shouldn’t be too expensive, but if you have a whole card full of photos, then it could get pricey, which is why it’s always better to try to get it right in camera!
Of course there is one final option, and that is just to let perfection go!
If you are always photographing someone with glasses (say your child) then not EVERY photo has to have glasses glare removed, so if the rest of the photo looks good, then just go with it :-)
And there you have it - 6 different ways you can get rid of glasses glare in photos!
KEEP ON READING:
How to Get Catchlights in photos
How to Use Window Light For Portraits
Step By Step Guide for Using Backlight