Caturday 87: Reflections and the Mosaic Cat

On Thursday morning last week (as in 9 days ago), we resumed our little walks after missing a few days. Although it has been a little cooler lately, we still had to walk early then to beat the heat, and we'd had other things going on for a few mornings. We chose to drive to our main street to visit the pet store. Lacey's spa groomer had suggested that a staggered tooth comb was required for our girl's coat, so off we went. 

We walked the street before the shops opened and even then found ourselves waiting for the pet store to open at 10. While we sat on the bench looking at the store window, Sue remarked on the poster showing a mosaic cat. It was picture-worthy, but there were reflections that would ruin a photo.

Nice as it was, I wasn't so much taken with the poster, but it did occur to me to take a photo regardless, for it would give me a chance to see what Lightroom's new reflection removal tool might do with it. I will let you be the judge.

The photo ↑ is straight our of the camera. No editing has been done apart from cropping because I had shot too wide to focus on the poster. There are a ton of reflections, including right below the cats mouth from the pizzeria across the street. 

After applying the filter, it image looked like this ↓ . Some reflections have, indeed, been reduced, including that of the pizza joint. The reflections are lessened but still somewhat present in the blank space to the sides of the poster, but the poster is looking much better.

I decided to crop the image down to just the poster. I also adjusted both the strength of the algorithm as well as the contrast. I think the result is pretty good considering.

It's not a 100% magical feature, but it is pretty darn good. It's a tool that can help reclaim a photo with problem reflections: probably not perfectly, but usefully.