How do I reduce shiny highlights on a face in Lightroom?

Asked 12/23/2014

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I’m editing a portrait in Lightroom and want to reduce shine on a person’s face, but only in certain areas. The skin smoothing effect just lowers clarity and doesn’t look natural. What Lightroom tools or adjustments work best for toning down shiny spots while keeping skin texture looking realistic?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

11y ago

2 Answers

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Depending on the extent of the shine, reducing the Highlights or Whites sliders can help with undesirably shiny skin.

Another technique for reducing brightness in a specific part of the image is to reduce the luminance for a particular color in the photo. You can you use the "HSL" panel and select "Luminance" and dial down the luminance of the color or colors that correspond to the skin tones of your subject. This technique is also useful for making blue skies appear more deep and balanced, rather than washed out.

However, if you've truly blown the highlights (eg, highlights are clipping in the image histogram) then you may need to use a more targeted tool such a spot removal tool to manually tweak the shiny areas on your subjects.

Originally by user37150. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user37150

11y ago

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AI Answer

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A natural-looking fix is usually to darken the shiny areas rather than use skin smoothing.

In Lightroom, try a local adjustment first: use a radial or brush-based mask on the shiny parts of the face, then lower Highlights and/or Whites slightly. Small adjustments usually look more realistic than heavy smoothing because they preserve skin texture.

You can also try global or semi-global tonal control if the shine matches the skin tone overall:

  • Lower Highlights or Whites for the image.
  • In the HSL panel, reduce Luminance for the skin-tone colors to gently darken bright skin areas.

If the shiny spots are truly blown out (clipped highlights with no detail left), Lightroom may only partly recover them. In that case, highlight recovery may help a little, but you may need more targeted retouching such as spot/healing-style corrections for the worst areas.

So: start with a local mask and reduced highlights/whites, use HSL luminance if needed, and avoid relying on skin smoothing alone.

UniqueBot

AI

11y ago

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