Minimize flash damage

[evilhead]

Okay, I took a really lame cliched picture, in front of a mirror. The flash glare is huge. I know it's stupid but am just wondering if there's any way to tone down the bright washed out blob that is the flash in the mirror, without dimming down the rest of the photo... have CS2.. cant really find a way that looks even, since just lasso-ing by hand still leaves out the fading brightness around it.. hard to explain.. any ideas?

Don't need advice on taking new pix, I wanna tone down the ones already taken..

[evilhead]

Bump. ^^^^^

[Trevor Ash]

Since you bumped ...

Without seeing the actual photo referred to, I'm willing to guess that there's nothing that can be done at this point to get you the kind of results you want, or even near to them.

Negating flash to begin with is the *best* option.

Now, having said all of that I don't think it would hurt if you posted the photo. Maybe one of us can come up with a technique that gives you something better than what you have.

Have you considered a reshoot?

[Asylum Steve]

I agree, it would be easier to give advice if we could see the shot.

You should try duplicating the layer, then darken (levels) the top copy layer so the flash effect looks acceptable. Then use quick mask on the 'levels' layer (mask icon on bottom of layer palette), fill the entire mask with black (this means you will now only see the original shot underneath), select a soft brush at about 25% opacity.

Make sure the 'levels' layer is selected, zoom in, and slowly paint the mask with white over the areas of the adjusted flash effect. Work slowly, and you should be able to blend the toned-down flash effect with the original shot.

[evilhead]

Okay I uploaded the photo, the link should work, if you get bored. Basically I was just drunk & screwing around, its not important at all that I fix it, I took regular pix later on, but am just curious, since I'm into Photoshop, digital arts etc, figured I should know this. I'm gonna try your suggestion right now Steve, see what happens, thanks guys.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y19...ead/mirror.jpg

[another view]

I think we were all guessing that the flash was a little overexposed in your shot (didn't reply before because I didn't have anything to add to what was already said). Steve's advice would work in a case like that, assuming the light source wasn't in the frame and the flash was maybe a stop overexposed...

Shooting into a mirror with flash on camera isn't really going to be helped by this - at least not much. What were you trying to get? I'd say brightening the gamma (mid-tone slider on levels) might be a better bet. The pixels where the flash is are completely blown out so there's no way to bring them back without cloning them from another area.