Help to repair photo glare.

[cantankrus]

I am a new user to gimp and photo editing and have a number of b/w mugshot images to clean up.
A lot of them have glare through them as in attached image.
Can someone point me to a step by step guide (video preferably) of the best way to repair the glare areas.
Speed and simplicity are more important than perfection for the editing process.

I have been playing around in gimp for a couple of days and have a basic understanding of
the various tools and how layers work but the amount of options are a bit overwhelming for a novice.
Using gimp 2.10 with gmic in Ubuntu Linux.
   

[denzjos]

make a new transparent layer
use a black brush to paint in the transparent layer over the flare
size 127
hardnes 20
force 20
click on the light places on the picture
correct with erase tool on the transparent layer if necessary 
   

[cantankrus]

(09-07-2019, 12:31 PM)denzjos Wrote: make a new transparent layer
use a black brush to paint in the transparent layer over the flare
size 127
hardnes 20
force 20
click on the light places on the picture
correct with erase tool on the transparent layer if necessary 

Thanks denzjos, I tried this and appears to work for a quick fix.

[Ofnuts]

Another technique (Practical only on 2.10)

• Create a white-black-white gradient (this is done once for all your pictures)
  

To fix a picture:

• Add a layer, set to Multiply mode
  
• Start the Blend tool
  
• Drag vertically from top flare limit to bottom flare limit
  
• Adjust opacity of the layer so that the dark a bar just darkens the image enough
  
• Adjust extremities and midpoint of gradient 
  

   

[cantankrus]

(09-08-2019, 04:21 PM)Ofnuts Wrote: Another technique (Practical only on 2.10)

• Create a white-black-white gradient (this is done once for all your pictures)
  

To fix a picture:

• Add a layer, set to Multiply mode
  
• Start the Blend tool
  
• Drag vertically from top flare limit to bottom flare limit
  
• Adjust opacity of the layer so that the dark a bar just darkens the image enough
  
• Adjust extremities and midpoint of gradient 
  

Hi Ofnuts, thanks.
I tried your method and works fairly well and looks ok when cleaned up and colorized using https://colourise.sg
   


Any tips on cleaning up an image like this?
   

[Ofnuts]

Depends on what you want to recover. Very many problems on that one.

[cantankrus]

The first woman mugshot I posted was a similar sample I found on the net because I didn't have one at home to attach.

Originally, the ones I have they look like this...
   
Being old photos of old photos the quality is poor and I think the glare was introduced in the second photo.
I'm guessing there isn't a quick fix and each photo would
require a fair amount of time to look ok.

[denzjos]

I think there is no flare on the bottom of the photo, but it seems to be a reflection of another object. The photo is probably taken through the glass of a showcase. It is difficult to restore the photo because it is a mix of two objects that overlap each other. So the original photo is distorted by the reflection of another object and is missing many details. In this case I always correct the photo manually with the different gimp tools that are available and is very time consuming. If you only want to light up the picture simply load the photo, copy the layer and set the layer mode to screen.

[cantankrus]

(09-12-2019, 09:09 AM)denzjos Wrote: I think there is no flare on the bottom of the photo, but it seems to be a reflection of another object. The photo is probably taken through the glass of a showcase. It is difficult to restore the photo because it is a mix of two objects that overlap each other. So the original photo is distorted by the reflection of another object and is missing many details. In this case I always correct the photo manually with the different gimp tools that are available and is very time consuming. If you only want to light up the picture simply load the photo, copy the layer and set the layer mode to screen.

Thanks for lighting tip. (and others for advice)
I don't think too many corrections should be made to historical photos so may be best to crop to the passable areas or use as is.
Thanks for the answers.

PS: being a Linuxer, I have had gimp on my computer for over 10 years but only ever used it for scaling screenshots.
Never realized how powerful gimp is.
A credit to the open-source community.

[denzjos]

I just want to mention that a bought a few years ago a plugin for a graphic program writter by CEH Berger. It is concerning forensic photo color deconvolution. One can try it on following site : https://4n6site.com/improc/decoplugin/webapp.htm