Shooting in hard sun: how to get rid of the glare spots

An image file stores the brightness of each point as a number. When a point is brighter than the maximum, its number is clipped to pure white — even though the real object there had lettering, a label edge and shadow. Once they are all recorded as the same white, the information that told them apart is no longer in the file.

So an editing tool that reduces glare is not restoring what was there; it is guessing what might have been under the white. On a plain single-colour surface that guess is usually fine. On a label with small lettering, what you get back is usually lettering it invented.

• Move into shade — under an eave, under an awning or on the shaded side of a building. There the light comes from the whole sky instead of one point, and the hotspot becomes a wide soft band instead of a white dot

• If you have to stay in the sun, turn the product itself until the hotspot slides off the label or the pattern. You don't have to move; turning the object is enough

• Raise or lower the camera angle slightly. The hotspot moves with your viewpoint, because it is a reflection of the sun bouncing into the lens, not a mark on the product

• Hold a sheet of white A4 paper, a white shirt or a translucent white bag between the sun and the product. The light that comes through is instantly wider and softer

• Avoid the part of the day when the sun is almost overhead — you can tell by your own shadow being at its shortest. Morning or towards evening puts the light at a lower angle through more atmosphere, so the hotspot is weaker

• Take several frames in a row, shifting a little each time, then pick the one where the whole label is readable. Extra frames cost nothing; repairing a ruined photo always costs something

• Glass and glossy plastic give one or two small sharp spots, and a tiny turn of the object moves them a long way

• Patent leather and satin give a long band that follows the curve of the material — blocking the light works better here than turning the object

• Metal reflects everything around it as a picture: the photographer's hand, the shirt being worn, the window. A dark shirt and more distance both help

• Matte fabric, paper and wood barely have this problem. A white patch on matte fabric means the whole photo is overexposed, not that something is reflecting

When the system generates a new photo, the lighting in it is built fresh rather than carried over from your upload. When you pick a setting from the library, a further set of lighting instructions goes out: one single lighting setup covers the whole photograph, the person is lit exactly as the location is lit, and if the location is dim the person is not brighter than everything around them. In Plien Roob's Product Showcase, one line goes out every time: wherever the product has a glossy or polished surface, what is mirrored in it is the place it is standing in, never highlights from a studio that isn't in the photograph.

But the colours, the pattern, the materials and the lettering on the product are instructed to follow the photo you uploaded. That means a blown-out white spot in your source photo can be read as part of what the product actually looks like, and carried into the new image. There is no remove-glare button, and no instruction telling the AI to remove one.

• A shorter side of 1024 pixels or more. Below 480 pixels the system will not accept it

• Use the original file from the camera or your photo library, not one forwarded through a chat app — chat apps compress files until small lettering falls apart

• The label and the lettering have to be readable to your own eye in the source file first. If you cannot read it, neither can the system