Remove reflections and glare in photos

Reflections appear on every glossy surface, and a home has more of them than you might expect: window panes, wall mirrors, glass cabinets, polished countertops, televisions, oven doors, and even a freshly mopped floor. The problem is rarely the object itself but the information the reflection carries by accident. A photographer with a flash in the bathroom mirror, or the dark shadow of a camera on the coffee table, distracts from the room and looks unprofessional. So the first step is always to avoid reflections while shooting rather than repair them laboriously later.

The most effective trick on site costs nothing: change your shooting angle. Do not stand directly in front of a mirror or window, but step slightly to the side. Five to ten degrees is often enough for your reflection to disappear from the frame. With windows it helps to shoot during the day with the flash off, because artificial light creates the strongest reflections. Turn off televisions and monitors, since a black, matte glass surface reflects far less than a screen that is switched on. A polarizing filter in front of the lens noticeably reduces reflections on glass and water and is a one-time purchase worth making.

Even so, not every reflection can be avoided, especially in small bathrooms or with floor-to-ceiling windows. This is where editing comes in. Small, clearly defined highlights, such as a bright spot from the ceiling light on a countertop, are the easiest to remove: the surrounding texture is pulled across the spot so the surface looks even again. The key is to preserve the natural grain or gloss gradient of the material, otherwise you create a flat, artificial patch that stands out even more than the reflection did.

Large mirror surfaces that show the whole room or the person behind the camera are harder. The rule here is to fix only what disturbs and leave the rest untouched. A wall mirror is meant to reflect, that is its function. You should only remove what gives the shot away, meaning the camera, the tripod, or your silhouette. The mirror stays recognizable as a mirror but shows a plausible piece of wall or room instead of you. On our platform, the vision model analyzes the reflection first and suggests which areas actually need correction before anything is changed.

Window panes where the interior and the outside world overlap are a special case. Sometimes the reflection is even desirable, for example when it hints at daylight and openness. If it disturbs, because furniture or people appear twice, honestly weigh whether a correction really improves the image or just adds effort. Often the fastest solution is to reshoot from a different angle. Not every reflection has to go, and the most important decision in photo editing is sometimes that nothing needs doing.

A note on the legal side: removing reflections, highlights, and flash traces is pure image correction and does not need to be labeled, just like exposure or cropping. But as soon as you add content that does not exist in reality, such as placing furniture into an empty room or inserting a view into a window, this counts as a change requiring disclosure under the rules in force since August 2026. Keep the line clear: what you remove to show reality more clearly is unproblematic. What you add to fake a different reality must be made transparent.