My intial measurements was done cold as well BTW.
In hindsight i should of put much less oil in and kept checking the dipstick becasue i jacked the car up on the drivers side may have effected the reading a bit aswell.
hks_kansei wrote:don;t pull the filter off to lower the oil, it won't be any different to removing the sump plug.
just empty the oil from the sump plug, then either fill it with fresh oil (preferable) or if you must, catch the drained oil in a clean container and then top it back up with that.
ADDIT, Ive dicided not to stuff around with guess work, i have two 4 litre ice cream containeres which will solve any suspicions i may have and tell me exactly how much oil there is given i have put in circa 5.8 litres in the last three weeks.