How to correct flash flare?

I have some images (obtained by scanning some old colour transparencies)
which have significant flash flare - where the flash has bounced off a
reflective surface. I cannot seem to find an acceptable way of eliminating
this flare in Photoshop, even after a Google search of the web and a look
through this forum.
The main problem is that the flare has gradients in colour, saturation and
texture. as well as being an entirely irregular shape of course.. Using the
clone tool, or healing brush, does not seem to work satisfactorily. This may
be because of my own inexperience.
Is there any advice?

X_Eyed_Bear

Re: How to correct flash flare?

I have now tried this technique; sadly it does not apply.
Ms. Eismann describes a technique for removing an artifact in the image (at
the bottom of Figure 7.82 in her book), casued by internal reflection in the
camera lens. What I am want to do is to remove the reflection of the flash
from a shiny surface - analogous to removing the large area (the sun) that
is blown to white in the top third of Figure 7.82. That should be relatively
straightforward for the image in Figure 7.92; my image sadly has gradients
in colour, texture and saturation in more than one direction (because of the
irregular nature of the reflecting surface) - but is not radial

X_Eyed_Bear

Re: How to correct flash flare?

I guess you are referring to the section starting on page 263, under the
heading 'Correcting Lens Flare'. I saw this entry in the index and ignored
it because it didn't say 'flash flare'. But now that I follow your advice
and have read this section, it looks directly relevant. I'll try it.
Many thanks for the pointer.

X_Eyed_Bear

Re: How to correct flash flare?

A technique from Katrin Eismann's excellent book "Photoshop Restoration
& Retouching 3rd edition" goes something like this:
Zoom in on the flare and use a 3-pixel lasso tool to select it.
Inspect the individual channels. If one has less damage from the flare,
activate it and Edit>Copy. Activate the other channels one by one and
Edit>Paste Into to repair these damaged channels. This removes the
flare and also the color.
Add a new layer and change the blend mode to Color.
With the clone stamp tool, sample similarly colored areas and clone
over the black-and-white area.
As long as you have one reasonably good channel, this should fix it.
For more extreme cases, Eismann has a more involved procedure that is
best detailed in her book.
Hope this helps.