Help, I overexposed the model's ears with a kicker light. I tried to make various corrections, but just wound up making it worse. Any help would be appreciated.

Just a quickie -

Duplicate image
select ears (I used Quick Mask)
copy to new layer
Hue/Saturation adjustment - select red channel, move lightness slider to -45
Color Balance - red +16, blue -14
Merge down.

Duwyane, thanks much. Very Helpful!!!

There are two approaches to the problem: hide it (attach 1) or fix the color-density (attach 2). :wink:

To fix:

Select both ears roughly.
Curves layer for density. Lower RGB curve to darken.
Curves layer for lowering red. Reduce excess red.
Paint masks of each curves layer to get best result possible. Still will not be great.
Add color fix layer at top of stack: blank layer set to color. Use neutralize brush to tone down excess red - hue, white, 10-20%. This will desaturate the red and bring it in line with the rest of the image. Use color brush to add red to areas that lack- color, red from lips, 10-20%. Yes, there are areas of too much red and areas of not enough. Got to balance them out.
Add dodge/burn layer under color fix. 50% gray overlay mode. Darken areas that are too light (paint black, low opacity) and lighten (paint white low opacity) areas that are too dark. The backlight created a lot of contrast which this reduces.
May have to go back to color fix layer and adjust after D/B.

Play with opacities of curves layer until correct balance is achieved.

Actually fixing it was quicker than hiding it.

Larry

leuallen, love it! Good tip.

Thanks, Max.

Hi there

Same procedures as above.. but I did paint the hair in and cloned some of the backlit area.. Then I boosted contrast with PWL

Butch

Sometimes it helps if ...