How to edit out an area of glare

Here is a quick way to reduce the glare.

Don't expect perfection, but I think this will help.

There are probably other solutions, and I expect others will chime in.

I will use the color wheels, together a shape mask, so that the effect will only apply in the affected area and not the rest of the image.

1) Start by showing the scopes - always a good help when color correcting. Press command-7

That marked area hitting 100% corresponds to the very bright glare off of the guitar.

2) Open the Inspector (command-4) and add a new color correction. You can press command-6 to add a color correction, or click the colored prism at the top. Select Color Wheels. Add a shape mask:

3) Adjust the Shape Mask:

4) In the Highlights wheel at the right, drag the Luma way down:

It looks a little better. It did not magically disappear, of course, but it is not as intense as before.

There is still a peak close to 100% on the right, caused by the reflection on the tripod. You can add a second Shape Mask:

I see you're a guitar-picker ... fingerstyle... so am I. You understand audio... and probably clipping. That glare is like clipped audio -- there just isn't enough "information" there to recover... It's burned beyond recognition. Use all the color wheels you want — you're not going to get that back. Unlike audio, there's a certain amount of repair that can be done. It's a cheat — but who's gonna know??

I'll give you a rundown how the repair is accomplished.

The first thing I did was find another National Reso-phonic image that roughly matches yours (same soundhole design). You could probably simply reshoot a photo with everything arranged (roughly) the same with better lighting. I "keyed" (or color masked - the glare region) a hole in your image and replaced it with the duplicate (sized and rotated to match yours)... Only where the glare area is (the substitute is not an exact likeness of your guitar but close enough to blend.) You only want to "patch in" only as much as needed. (Some feathering is involved to help match the pieces.)

That works for "inside" the guitar image. There was still a mess to clean up outside the guitar.

Part of the problem is: That glare is a necessary source for the lighting of other objects in the immediate area. So what I did then was create another masked out area and filled it with a Cloned region from another part of the image (the floor region to the front and right of the guitar that still has "detail" - scaled up 120%). I used Levels controls (effective only inside the masked region) to try and balance the blend matching it to the unmasked regions of the image. In lieu of a "clone", you could do a second key and another copy of the clip to get the filler material. Use Color Wheels or other effects to blend it into the main image.

There area still has a "glare" — it still attracts "unwanted" attention because of the overall "darkness" of the scene (you want the attention to stay on the performer) — but now there are at least details to see.

Since this topic exists on Apple's site, their rules: I can't give you any information about the tools I used (the moderators would delete it anyway [they're mine and they're commercial]). I'm just trying to suggest that such repairs are possible and there's usually more than one way to accomplish it. If you know it's possible, then perhaps it's worth a try.

The irony is: I really didn't put that much work into it. The same techniques are used in Photoshop, and just as easy (except sometimes keyframing is involved... still... easy).