Need help with glare on a photo

[Coleen]

Hello everyone. I haven't been on in a long time - but I recently took a trip to visit a very good friend and took a picture of him in his car. The problem is that the glare on the car hides his face! I was messing around with the photo effect painter, to try to darken the area across his face so you can see some of it, but when I do, it LOOKS like I've edited the photo. I'm attaching a copy of the photo - can anyone tell me how to darken the glare so I can see his face in this photo? I'd really appreciate any help I can get! Thanks in Advance.
Edited to add, I am using Xara Design Pro X - thanks!

[gwpriester]

The problem here is there is no detail to salvage in that glare. I tried a few thing with no luck at all.

[mwenz]

There are two things that could make the below better.

A higher resolution image.
A photo of his face at more or less the same aspect/angle.

Well, and a third thing. More time than the minute I took...

AI also have no idea how this is done in an Xara application. I used an image editor. Cloned the area of his head. Then copied pixels from the face to where the glare was. I used some darker pixels to imitate a mouth. But like I said, the two things listed above, and a couple more minutes, would make for a better job.

Mike

[Coleen]

I know that you can't see his features clearly, but if I could get rid of some of the glare across his face, maybe it would look a little better. The other thing I tried is an overlay/clone (which I REALLY suck at) I have a good photo of him where you can see his features, and his face is just about at the right angle - so the overlay (or clone tool) might work - IFI knew how to use it correctly. Here is a copy of the photo I was trying to use to overlay or clone from:
Is there any way to do this where it could be blended? I tried, and I got a pretty good image overlay, but I have no idea how to make it so that the two photos blend, and it doesn't look like I've overlayed one photo onto another. Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

[Coleen]

Thanks mwenz! That's what I was trying to do - clone or overlay the image from the pic I just attached in another response - but I SUCK at it! I have no idea how to clone this without it LOOKING like I have overlayed one pic on top of another! I'd really like to know how to do this myself - but ALL help is VERY appreciated!

[ernie-f]

Thanks mwenz! That's what I was trying to do - clone or overlay the image from the pic I just attached in another response - but I SUCK at it! I have no idea how to clone this without it LOOKING like I have overlayed one pic on top of another! I'd really like to know how to do this myself - but ALL help is VERY appreciated!

Use an ImageEditor like Photoshop, AffinityPhoto or for free Gimp. Use masks to cut out the face. use HSL to contol the hue, saturation and light. Thats all. If You never done this, is this the point for You to learn it.

[theinonen]

Forum resizes images too small and makes them blurry to get good results for compositing.


For this need only to mask part of the face from a second image and then feather it to blend it with original image for seamless join to original image. Make it also not totally opaque for the glare still be visible for more realistic result. After that just position the masked face and finally adjust saturation and lightness to match with original image.


Looks like Jeremy Clarkson on testdrive. (Original image was little dark, so it was lightened and headlamps were turned on to take some focus away from the face.)

[Coleen]

Thank you SO much Theionen, that is exactly the info I needed! I want to know how to do this myself - and you're right the original image IS high resolution, but the forum image loader cuts them WAY down. The image I uploaded (or tried to) was 6mgb but of course the image the forum displays is only in KB so you can't do a whole lot with that and still make it look good. I'm still working on it - but here is what I've come up with on my first try with your suggestion: