Removing ‘Shine’ Selectively

[Danette]

Not being a professional cameraman or having access to make-up artists, my camcorder videos have their share of imperfections. In particular, right now, I am trying to find a way to reduce the ‘shine’ from surfaces. For example, if a light is too bright, a person’s face will shine and obliterate most of the facial features.

I’m looking for recommendation for Avisynth filters that can help to SELECTIVELY reduce such hot spots. I know I can correct it by adjusting gamma, brightness and contrast, but these will then affect the entire image. I’m hoping that there is some approach available that would, via a threshold-type mechanism, just work on these hot spots, leaving the rest of the image untouched.

[wonkey_monkey]

I would try fusing (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=152109) the original and corrected videos, with the mask set to the blown-out areas. This should give you the best blend between the areas.

Can you post a sample video or a still frame?

[lansing]

Unless your camera has a high dynamic range or shoots raw/log footage, you're not going to recover details on those over-exposed area in the post.

[StainlessS]

Wonkey, so sad that all of your lovely images got lost, had a look, and its ImageShack that screwed you.

Looks like they did the same as PhotoBucket for free accounts, and started saying "Givuss yor munny, or the pics get it".
(I managed to claw back most of mine from PhotoBucket)