Reducing speculars

[Cary Knoop]

Is there a filter I can use that reduces specular areas by extending the outside non-specular pixel values slightly inwards?

A "cheap" version of such a filter would be to overlay a box or Gaussian blur on the frame and mask the overlay with everything but the highest luma values of the original.

Or perhaps better a convolutional filter that "bleeds" the current pixel value into a neighboring pixel if that pixel value is (close to) max.

[lansing]

What is a specular?

[Cary Knoop]

What is a specular?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_reflection#:~:text=Specular%20reflection%2C%20or%20regular%20reflection,as%20light%2C%20from%20a%20surface.

[ifb]

So you want knee (https://helpguide.sony.net/di/pp/v1/en/contents/TP0000909107.html) controls? That's how you would do it live, but if your highlights are already blown out it's not going to magically help. It sounds like you want to try inpainting the speculars?

[Cary Knoop]

So you want knee (https://helpguide.sony.net/di/pp/v1/en/contents/TP0000909107.html) controls?
No, I am not asking for knee controls.

It sounds like you want to try inpainting the speculars?
No, I don't want to implant them, I want to make them marginally smaller before I upscale.

I can do it in DaVinci Resolve with a DCTL, I was just wondering if someone already knows of an applicable filter in Vapoursynth.