Adobe Photoshop Tutorial

 

Remove White Bloom

 

Sometimes when you are photographing in bright sunlight you get a nasty white bloom in the middle of the print from light reflected from the outer surface of the lens. (My first digi camera with a big 12X lens but no lens hood was bad for this)

 

Here is an example :

 

Make a copy (for safety) of the layer by dragging the Layer thumb down to the copy icon and rename it to something meaningful – E.G. Hiker

 

Enter Quick Mask

 

and select a Soft, Round, Airbrush about 300px diameter. It needs to just cover the white bloom area

 

What we want to do here is apply a darkening Level adjustment that gets softer as it is distanced from the middle of the white bloom, so that there is almost nil effect at the edges

 

Set the brush opacity to about 80%, center the airbrush in the middle of the bloom and click once

 

Exit Quick Mask, and invert the selection (Ctr/Shift/I) so you can see the "marching ant" circle around the bloom

 

Open the Image/ Adjustments/ Levels dialog and experiment with the slider until the level of light darkens to match the rest of the photo. I used 0.6 as a median level, and the all extra white light has magically vanished. It may help you to hide the marquee selection (Ctr/H) while you do the adjustments.

 

All the White "Bloom" has vanished:

The photo is of bush walkers in the Raukumara Forest Park,(NZ).