Reflection-reduced contrast formation method for generating a reflection-reduced contrast image, preferably from microscopic images, in particular for reading height profile information of an object property, comprising the following steps in the following order: - illuminating an object by way of two or more illumination sources that each individually illuminate the object in an illumination sequence; - creating an illumination image of the object for each illumination of the object of the illumination sequence; - ascertaining a reflection-corrected illumination image for each illumination image, in each case by superposing the corresponding illumination image with an illumination image that is adjacent with respect to a first axis and with a further illumination image that is adjacent with respect to a second axis; - superposing in each case two reflection-corrected illumination images that are adjacent with respect to the first axis to form a first total axis image of the first axis; - superposing in each case two reflection-corrected illumination images that are adjacent with respect to the second axis to form a second total axis image of the second axis; - creating a first colour gradient image based on the first total axis image; - creating a second colour gradient image based on the second total axis image; - transforming the first colour gradient image and the second colour gradient image into a colour space; and - generating a contrast image based on the transformed first colour gradient image and the second colour gradient image into the colour space such that four pieces of direction information (351, 352, 361, 362) of a height profile of a property of the object are representable in colour-coded fashion. - illuminating an object by way of two or more illumination sources that each individually illuminate the object in an illumination sequence; - creating an illumination image of the object for each illumination of the object of the illumination sequence; - ascertaining a reflection-corrected illumination image for each illumination image, in each case by superposing the corresponding illumination image with an illumination image that is adjacent with respect to a first axis and with a further illumination image that is adjacent with respect to a second axis; - superposing in each case two reflection-corrected illumination images that are adjacent with respect to the first axis to form a first total axis image of the first axis; - superposing in each case two reflection-corrected illumination images that are adjacent with respect to the second axis to form a second total axis image of the second axis; - creating a first colour gradient image based on the first total axis image; - creating a second colour gradient image based on the second total axis image; - transforming the first colour gradient image and the second colour gradient image into a colour space; and - generating a contrast image based on the transformed first colour gradient image and the second colour gradient image into the colour space such that four pieces of direction information (351, 352, 361, 362) of a height profile of a property of the object are representable in colour-coded fashion.