How to reduce glare on glossy black acrylic without affecting overlapping metallic chains (no manual tracing)

Question

I’m working in Photoshop on a product photo that includes a high-gloss black acrylic board with metal chains and gold elements hanging in front of it. The problem is that the specular glare on the acrylic overlaps and intersects with the chains, and any attempt to select the board also selects parts of the chain.

Key constraints:

The acrylic board and the chains share similar brightness and color in places

The glare overlaps the chains (not cleanly separated)

I do not want to manually trace or lasso the chains or board

I want a non-destructive workflow (adjustment layers / masks preferred)

My goal:

Reduce or control glare/reflections on the black acrylic

Keep the chains, gold bar, and lettering completely untouched

Ideally use tonal, luminosity, object-based, or mask-driven techniques rather than hand masking

Is there a recommended Photoshop workflow for protecting complex metallic objects and adjusting the surface behind them when selections overlap like this?

Screenshot attached.

Photoshop version: Photoshop 2026 (v27.3.1, Windows 11, 64-bit)

Trevor.Dennis · Answer

Can you be more specific about the area you want to fix?

Is it the reflections behind the chains, for instance?

The top left corner has some glare. Is that it?

Something that has been working well for me is also something I don’t think you are going to like, but it is so quick and easy it is hard to ignore. Gemini 3.0 with the prompt Remove the reflections from behind the chains did this for me, but I only selected the relative area, and NB did its usual shift thing. You’ll be working at way too high a resolution to get past this.

If it was not commercial, and demanding super sharp results then you could maybe get away with working at low res and upscaling with the Topaz option.

Anyway, give us some belt and braces account of what needs to be changed.

BTW Can you use the Shoot-it-Again filter? I suspect you could control that surface with a large black flag in the right position. Have you ever read Fil Hunter’s Light Science & Magic? Its the defacto source for product photography lighting and set up. It might be out there as a downloadable PDF if you look.

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