Reducing Glare and Coloration for Animals?

I was at the Indianapolis Zoo this weekend and they have some Koala's there for the summer. It was awesome just to be able to see them, but frustrating at the same time because I wasn't able to get a very good picture of them. They were behind glass, and there was quite a bit of glare. I was going to stay longer to see if I could get a good picture of them, but after an hour of waiting for them to wake up, I was running low on time and wanted to check some of the other stuff out. It doesn't help any that these guys sleep 75% of the day either.

I was just wondering if anyone had some advice on how to get some of the glare out of the picture, there's a pretty visible line where the glare was in the picture, towards the right side of his face. I know it's not the sharpest picture, but for the 10 seconds he had his face showing, I tried the best I could to get him. I have photoshop CS2, which is what I do most of my editing in. Any help would be appreciated.

On a second look, it might not actually be that bad, but it is really bothering me. Maybe I'm being too picky?

I used a strong contrast preset curve is Photoshop and then increased the exposure by 1/3 of a stop. There really isn't much glare, just a reduction in the contrast of the image. Would come out better if you took it in RAW

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For a picture like yours, I think it would be enough to increase contrast and possibly saturation too. I like to give a healthy boost to black levels, and contrast. Basically you treat it like a low contrast image.


Before:

The photo has a number of fixable problems but it all comes down to how aggressive you want to be in post processing.

1. It was posted in Adobe RGB which tends to make photos appear washed on the Web. Should always convert to sRGB before posting on the Web.

2. You used a shutter speed of 1/125 which caused the photo to be slightly out of focus because of the 200mm focal length of your lens. Ideally you want to your shutter speed to be no less than the reciprocal of your focal length unless you're using a tripod or other support. Ideal shutter speed would have been at least 1/(200 x 1.6) or 1/320. Increase your ISO to get the desired shutter speed.

I color corrected the slightly reddish color cast; fixed the focus and burned the top of the background to bring the attention to the koala's face.

Very nice work Jadis.

Using a lens hood hard up against the glass (if possible), and/or your hand to shield glare away from the glass can help in these situations.

Although it can depend on how clean the glass is.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the feedback and I will try these tips when I get home, and see what the results are.

I always seem to forget to switch it back into SRGB before posting it on the internet. Is there an easy way to remember this, or just something I'm going to have to get used to remembering?

A CPL will help a lot in reducing some of the glare in animal coats/furs. It won't fix them all, but does reduce some of the hotspots.

You can fix this image, but it took 7 layers. 3 Levels, one curves, a Hue/Saturation, Selective Color and a merged version that was noise reduced and sharpened.

I was kind of stuck in between a rock and a hard place. I definately should have had something to help support the camera while taking the picture, but didn't bring anything on my whole trip for that. It was taken with a 70-200 f4, and when I had my CPL on it, I was getting even lower shutter speeds.

I definately should have increased the ISO, but to be honest, it wasn't something I thought of inst since the little guy had only moved once in the hour that I was there, I may have got a little excited.

I appreciate the advice and work on it guys, hopefully next time I can get a better exposure and picture and not have all this post processing to do on it.

rselinger wrote in post #5782561
I always seem to forget to switch it back into SRGB before posting it on the internet. Is there an easy way to remember this, or just something I'm going to have to get used to remembering?

Leave your camera in sRGB mode - it's a lot easier.

You won't need to use AdobeRGB unless you're regularly printing using professional labs.

Even if I'm printing from my Epson R2400? I print from there enough, but do you think sRGB would be fine and I wouldn't notice any issues?

sRGB will be fine for that. I use it on mu IP6600D with no problems.

Read Renee's Colour Management Thread