What’s wrong with this picture?

This is the bottom of a remarkable staircase in a small bookstore in Porto, Portugal. It has become quite famous, and hundres of people flock here daily to photograph it and to take selfies in front of it.

I cloned out a few people seen through the railing, but the one problem left is the sheen on the steps. It’s not terrible, but it is distracting. It constantly diverts our attention from the rest of the composition.

The image on the next page shows the repair. Note there are still highlights on the steps, albeit a lot more subtle. I wanted to retain the effect of the diffused window light on the steps, but the overexposed highlights had to be toned down to make this perfect.

The technique I used on the bottom two steps was to set the clone tool to 50% opacity. I then cloned the saturated red color (and texture) over the highlights. This took care of the problem, but there was just a little bit of uneven color. The cloning job looked a bit blotchy.

So, I then lowered the opacity further to 30% and smoothed out the color. The lowered opacity allowed the highlights to come through the color, thus the character of the lighting didn’t change.

I did the same thing with the front edge of the steps. That thin edge which originally showed as a bright highlight was toned down again with the clone tool at 50% opacity. §