How to Remove Glare From Glasses

Capturing photos might result in a glare that can ruin the whole photo. If you’re a photographer who wears glasses, you must be aware of this problem because you’ve seen it happen in photos that you’re in. It’s good to know how to remove glare from glasses, both before taking the photo, as well as in post.

How to Remove Glare From Glasses  

To remove glare from glasses you can first try to make adjustments while shooting. This involves changing the angle from where you shoot, changing the direction of the light, and coating the glasses. However, if nothing works, you can adjust it in post. 

Try Different Angles

When you are capturing photos, make sure that the angle of the light is not directly towards the subject. If it is, the glasses will reflect that light right off and cause a glare. When the light pointing directly at a person wearing glasses, it leads to a glare. This glare from reflection does not look good and can ruin the whole image.

Therefore, make a slight change in the angle you are shooting from to reduce or eliminate the glare. This change in angle could simply mean the photographer moving around in their place a bit.

You could also ask the subject to move their head until the glare is gone, or ask the person to tilt their glasses up or down a bit. Lifting the back end of the glasses could solve the problem. However, it sometimes might involve asking the subject to move a bit (if they are directly in the direction of the light).

Make Use of the Shade

Attaching a camera hood on the front of the lens can prevent light from entering the lens from different directions. This might help reduce glare. Similarly, if you do not have a camera hood, you can simply position yourself in the shade and reduce the amount of glare. 

Change the Direction of the Light

You can also avoid glasses glare by moving the direction of the light. Here, you can use backlighting where you position the light behind the subject. During daytime, when you are shooting this can be relatively easy by making sure that the sun is behind the subject.

However, this might prove difficult at night, in studios, or when you are doing flash photography when the light is positioned in front of the object. Here too, you can change the angle of the light until the glare disappears.  

Besides this, you can use reflected light too. The intensity of the light reduces when you reflect it off some surface. You can use a light reflector for this purpose and this would light the subject while making sure that it reduces or diminishes the glare.

Coat the Glasses

You can coat the glasses to remove the glare too. One of the options is to use an anti-reflective glare. It is a thin layer that is applied at the front and back of your glasses. Using this makes sure that light does not reflect off your glasses.

To apply this, you first clean your lenses and then inspect carefully for any microscopic or visible defects. Any small scratch or hairline can lead to a defective coating. After that the coating is applied. There are some small cases where there might be residual colors though. 

Although this coating improves vision and looks better in photographs, it has some downsides. It can lead to your lenses getting scratched quickly. The scratches can appear very visible and can thus look bad in photos. 

Use Frosting

Another coating that might be available is frosting. This is available in sunglasses, there are a lot of sprays available that will allow you to apply a frosting layer to your sunglasses. This will remove all reflections and thus also remove glare. 

Use a Polarizing Filter and Diffuser

A polarizing filter or a circular polarizer filter can help reduce glare from various sources of light by filtering light that has already been polarized due to reflection from a filter. This filter reduces the light that comes off a reflected surface and helps reduce glare. 

This filter will allow you to remove the glare off the lenses. After applying this filter on your lenses, you need to adjust it while looking through the viewfinder. However, you should avoid full polarization as although it would remove glare, it will lead to a poorly lit picture because it has two stops of light. It might darken the overall image

Another good option you can use is a diffuser. Softening the light can reduce the intensity of the light and therefore reduce glare. 

Fix It in Post

Once you already have glare in your photos, you are left with only one option: editing the photo to remove glasses glare altogether. There are many editing tools out there such as Lightroom, Photoshop, and some apps such as Photoworks.

Lightroom Tools

Lightroom is an editing application that can help remove glare. First, open the Spot Removal Tool. Your aim here is to remove the glare from the part which covers your skin. You should clone another part of your face to match the area in the glasses. 

To apply this method, zoom in because you will be making edits to a very small area. Choose a small sized brush and choose the area you want to edit. Adjust the opacity and feather bars. 

Then, run the brush over that area to make the edit. 

Another way to make edits is to use the Adjustment Brush. Choose the brush and apply a mask over the area you want to edit. Then adjust highlights, contrast, and exposure to reduce the intensity of the glare. If you follow the tutorial properly, the glare can be removed from the photo. 

Related Questions

How Do You Get Rid of Glasses Glare on an iPhone?

You can get rid of glasses glare on an iPhone using iPhoto. iPhoto has an editing feature that allows you to make various edits, including removing glare from your photos. Just open the app and choose the image you want to edit. Open the edit bar and choose retouch. 

Choose the area where you want to make the edit by covering it with a rectangle. Release it and this will get rid of or almost remove the glare. If it is not removed, go to adjust and adjust the contrast, highlight, shadow, and brightness until you get rid of the glare. 

How Do You Reduce Glare on Glasses During Zoom?

You can reduce glare on glasses during zoom by firstly moving the direction of the light, so that it is not directly hitting your lenses. After that you should try to change the height of the light or yourself (sit up straight if you are not already). 

Besides this, you can switch off the extra lights in your office or other workspace. You can use less intense lights too. Moreover, you can try and tilt your glasses a bit upwards or downwards to prevent the light of your computer from hitting your glasses directly. 

Conclusion

Wearing glasses means that you sometimes have to face the hassle of glare while capturing photos. It can be removed by shooting from a different angle, changing the direction of the light, and applying coating on your glasses. If all of these fail, you can always edit the glare off in Lightroom, or Photoshop.