how to soften lights

[vickatter]

Hi,
I´m retouching a couple of pictures and they have that horrible speedlight look, is there a very quick way to soften flash lights? To get started I mean....

[Wolfman]

Maybe lower the contrast a little or use shadow/highlight tool and open shadows slightly
or use a contrast mask. All have a similar effect and will take some of the harshness down.

[TommyO]

I prefer to open the image in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) first and do all initial adjustments there. This assumes the lighting is not ridiculously all over the place. This also preserves as much image detail as possible so that further edits are less destructive.

[0lBaldy]

What software are you using?

Photoshops Patch tool sometimes does a fine job on a new layer depending on which version of Photoshop you are using.. (Ps7, use it on a copy of the background).

Also just painting on a new layer with its blend mode set to Darken using a color selected from very near the hot spot using a soft brush @ about 30% opacity... then adding a little noise and maybe some Gaussian and adjusting layer opacity will work well also.

[andyong]

no sample image, hard to imagine the exact horrible speedlight look.
but u can try this:
- duplicate image
- set the duplicate blending to MULTIPLY
- go to chanel pallete, load selection from BLUE chanel then add layer mask to that duplicate layer
- play with opacity to your taste
hope it can help you.

note: these steps for photoshop.