How To Remove Light Glare From Photo

A bright ring, a washed patch, or a rainbow speck can turn a keeper into a reject. With a few simple shooting habits and targeted edits, you can learn how to remove light reflection in photo and save most frames. This guide explains what causes glare, ways to prevent it, and easy fixes for any shooting situation.

What Light Glare Is and Why It Appears

Light glare is a bright spots, streak, or veil-like haze that show up when stray light reaches the lens or sensor instead of the subject. It feels like the picture is fighting the light instead of capturing it. There are three common causes.

Direct Light Hitting the Lens

When a bright light sits in or near the frame, rays hit the lens and create flare. Think sunset portraits with the sun in front: the image loses contrast, highlights wash out, and faint colored rings can appear.

Internal Lens Reflections

Lenses have stacked glass elements, and light can bounce between them to create faint ghost rings, especially in older or cheap optics.

Reflections From Surrounding Surfaces

Shiny surfaces act like mirrors. Water, glass storefronts, polished metal, or glossy makeup can throw specular highlights into the lens. Sometimes the flare is not the sun itself but a reflection of it. The angle of those surfaces relative to your camera is critical.

How to Prevent Light Glare During Shooting

Preventing glare is faster and cleaner than repairing it later. These tactics remove the problem before it exists.

Shield the Lens From Direct Light

A lens hood is worth its price. It blocks off-axis light the same way a sun visor shades your eyes. If the hood cannot help, use your hand, a hat, or a small flag to block the offending ray. For outdoor portraits, a hand or a coat can act as a quick shield without rigging.

Change Your Shooting Angle

Move a step left, right, up, or down. Often, a tiny angle change is all it takes to move a bright spec out of the lens path. If the subject can move, rotate them a few degrees. These small shifts usually do not change the composition in a harmful way but eliminate flare.

Use a Polarizing Filter

A polarizer reduces reflections from non-metallic surfaces like water and glass. Rotate the filter and watch reflections fade in the viewfinder. It will not remove internal lens flare, but it will cut surface glare dramatically when you need it.

Diffuse Harsh Light (Sun or Flash)

Soft light creates softer highlights. Put a softbox on a flash or hang a translucent diffuser for sunlight. Even a white sheet works for a quick fix. The goal is to spread the light so there are no concentrated hot spots that can blow out pixels.

Block Unwanted Reflections (Flags, Fabric, Shade)

In a studio, use black flags, foam board, or dark fabric to cut reflections. Outside, move the subject into shade or create shade with a reflector. If a window reflects a streetlight into your lens, temporarily cover part of the window with matte material.

Use Higher-Quality Optics

Newer lenses with multi-coating and well-designed element layouts reduce internal reflections. If you routinely shoot into strong light, a lens designed to resist flare will save time in post.

Adjust Camera Settings

Lower ISO reduces the sensor’s amplification of stray light. A short shutter keeps bright patches from washing out a frame. Shooting RAW preserves highlight detail so you can recover areas that look blown out in JPEG.

Avoid Glossy and Mirror-Like Surfaces

Switch glossy props for matte ones when possible. If a subject wears shiny jewelry, ask them to tilt it or remove it for a few frames.

Choose the Right Time of Day

Soft morning or late afternoon light reduces the risk of brash specular highlights. For tips on using low, warm light in portraits, read The Magic Of Golden Hour Portraits. Golden hour tones cut harsh reflections and add pleasing color to skin.

What to Do If Glare Still Appears in the Photo

Even careful sets fail sometimes. For many photographers, the question is simply how to get rid of glare in photos, and the short answer is a mix of spot repair, local exposure control, and texture cloning. Below are detailed, practical steps for popular editors.

Removing Glare in Luminar Neo

Luminar Neo is fast for AI-assisted fixes and good when you need consistent results quickly.

Erase Tool

AI-powered spot removal that fills the selected area using surrounding pixels.

1. Open your photo in Luminar Neo.

2. Switch to the Erase or Spot Removal tool.

3. Choose a brush size slightly larger than the glare.

4. Click or paint over the bright spot and release.

5. Inspect the result and undo/retry with a different brush size if needed.

Develop + Masking

Local adjustments with masks let you darken and desaturate only the affected area.

1. Open the image and go to Develop (or the RAW processing panel).

2. Activate the Mask tool and pick a brush.

3. Paint precisely over the blown or hazy zone.

4. Reduce Highlights and Exposure sliders until the glare blends with its surroundings.

5. Soften the mask edge and lower the opacity if the correction looks harsh.

Clone & Stamp

Manual texture replacement by sampling nearby clean areas.

1. Open the photo and find Clone & Stamp under professional tools.

2. Alt-click (or the sample command) on a nearby area with a matching texture.

3. Paint over the glare with light strokes, resampling often.

4. Build the fill gradually to match local grain and tone.

5. Use a feathered brush and reduced opacity for smoother blending.

If you edit many frames of the same setup, consider a batch workflow for consistent results and try tools aimed at editing studio photos to speed repetitive tasks.

Correcting Glare in Affinity Photo

Affinity combines smart fills with hands-on tools, giving you everything you need when learning how to take the glare out of a picture.

Inpainting Brush

Smart fill that analyzes neighboring pixels to repair small blemishes.

1. Create a duplicate of the background layer.

2. Select the Inpainting Brush from the toolbar.

3. Paint over small highlights or specular dots.

4. Let Affinity auto-fill the area and check the result.

5. Undo and refine the brush if the patch looks off.

Clone Brush

Precise manual cloning for cases where automatic fills fall short.

1. Duplicate the base layer.

2. Choose the Clone Brush and pick a soft brush tip.

3. Alt-click to sample a suitable patch of texture.

4. Paint over the glare using short, overlapping strokes.

5. Vary the source point frequently to avoid repeating patterns.

Dodge & Burn on Soft Light Layer

Restores natural contrast and depth after repairing highlights.

1. Add a new layer and set its blend mode to Soft Light.

2. Fill it with 50% gray, then select Dodge to lighten or Burn to darken.

3. Paint subtly to rebuild shadows and highlights around the repaired zone.

4. Reduce the layer opacity until the effect is natural.

5. Merge or keep separate for future tweaks.

Removing Glare in Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop gives the most control when flares overlap important features like eyes or texture.

Patch Tool

Texture-aware replacement is ideal for medium-sized glare patches.

1. Duplicate the background layer.

2. Select the Patch Tool and draw around the glare.

3. Drag the selection to a clean area; Photoshop will blend tone and texture.

4. Feather the patch if the edges look harsh.

5. Tweak with the Healing Brush if needed.

Clone Stamp Tool

Exact texture transfer by manually sampling and painting.

1. Work on a new layer above your image.

2. Alt-click to sample a nearby clean area.

3. Paint over the glare with short, deliberate strokes.

4. Resample frequently to preserve natural variation.

5. Lower layer opacity to integrate the fix.

Healing & Spot Healing Brushes

Fast, automatic texture blending for small dots and specks.

1. Duplicate the layer.

2. Choose the Spot Healing or Healing Brush.

3. Click or drag over small glare spots.

4. For the Healing Brush, Alt-sample a clean area first.

5. Zoom in and repeat until the area looks uniform.

If you want to rework how the light feels in an image after repair, experiment with a lighting editor to test subtle changes in apparent light direction and falloff.

Correcting Glare with Capture One

Capture One excels at raw control and nuanced local adjustments.

Adjustment Layers + Healing Brush

Non-destructive local fixes with raw editing precision.

1. Open the image and add an Adjustment Layer.

2. Select the Healing Brush and sample a clean area.

3. Paint over small flares and let Capture One blend automatically.

4. Tweak layer opacity and feathering to match the background.

5. Save as a variant to compare before/after.

Local Exposure Correction

Use targeted exposure reduction to tone down washed areas.

1. Create a local mask over the glare.

2. Lower Exposure and Highlights on that mask.

3. Add contrast or clarity locally to restore depth.

4. Soften the mask edges to avoid visible seams.

5. Fine-tune saturation if the area gained a color cast.

Dehaze on Mask

Removes veil-like glare by increasing local contrast and clarity.

1. Paint a mask over the foggy area.

2. Apply Dehaze sparingly and watch contrast recover.

3. Balance with exposure so you do not create dark halos.

4. Soften edges and lower saturation if needed.

5. Keep the effect subtle to avoid an artificial look.

Fixing Glare in GIMP

GIMP provides free, manual tools that work well if you are patient.

Heal Tool

Sample-based repair that blends texture and color from nearby pixels.

1. Duplicate the background layer.

2. Select the Heal Tool and Ctrl-click a clean sample point.

3. Paint over the glare with short strokes.

4. Resample frequently for changing textures.

5. Fine-tune with layer opacity and masks.

Clone Tool

Manual copying of texture for areas where automatic healing fails.

1. Create a new layer and choose the Clone Tool.

2. Ctrl-click a suitable source area to sample.

3. Paint carefully over the glare with soft edges.

4. Vary the source to avoid repeating patterns.

5. Blend by lowering layer opacity or using masks.

Color Correction (Curves, Color Balance)

Match repaired areas to the original tones and brightness.

1. After texture work, add a Curves or Color Balance adjustment.

2. Tweak brightness and color to match surrounding pixels.

3. Use a layer mask to confine the correction to the repaired zone.

4. Nudge sliders gently to avoid abrupt shifts.

5. Compare before/after to confirm invisibility of the fix.

If you only need to take glare off photo on one or two frames, GIMP or Affinity are cost-effective options that deliver great results with careful work.

Last Words

Editors have different strengths: AI for quick fixes, manual tools for pixel-level control. Pick the approach by flare type and final use: repair in layers, heal, clone, fix exposure, then local color. Small, careful edits keep results natural, so practice on real shoots and you’ll stop losing frames to stray light.