Help Fixing Overexposed Photo

[photoze34]

Hello Forum!

I'm a newbie to the forum and also photography (1 year). I am quite challenged when photographing anything white.

In this case, I recently photographed a family. They wore white shirts and blue jeans. In most of the photos the white shirts are blown out / overexposed. Someone told me if the color reads 255 255 255 then there is no hope to fix.

I stumbled across this forum and saw the great work of the experts so I thought I'd try my luck and hopefuly you guys can help me out so I don't have to do a reshoot.

I shot these photos in both JPEG and RAW. I use Photoshop CS2 and new user of Lightroom.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
AJ

[Swampy]

This is my own personal feeling, but white shirts are supposed to be white. Even bright white when shot in strong sunlight. I'm not sure where you want to go with this, but the rest of the color looks good to me and what you have is acceptable to my eye. I'm more interested in the faces.

You can add a hint of pixels by doing a selective color adjustment on a selection of whites (with absolute checked) and add black at +4 to =5ish if you just have to have no "blown out pixels" in the image.

[smak]

Isn't there a blue cast on both the photos? The folds on the shirts are higher in B.

Blown out- if you move the eyedropper around and it stays at 255, then there is no detail there.

[madclark]

I agree too. I'm not really distracted by the white shirts and like others have said, if there's no detail to begin with you can't enhance it.

Otherwise I would suggest doing a dodge and burn in the close-up portrait for the SHADOWS. The exposure is right for areas in the bright sunlight but the kids and the dad to the left are at the wrong angle and you lose all detail in the shadows. You could pull out some detail there.

BTW, handsome family and great pictures!

[photoze34]

Thanks to everyone who has responded so far. Execellent feedback. I'll try not to get so hung up on the white. :-) That's what I was focusing on fixing first. The photos I posted are unedited versions.

This is an awesome forum. Thanks for being so helpful. Keep'um coming if others have more thoughts.

All the best,
AJ

[Juergen D]

Somebody please correct me, but I think the first image is too dark, too saturated and a little too blue.
I used ACR 4.1 with Elements to up the exposure and brighten the background. In Elements I desaturated the Blue.

Juergen

[Nikolas]

Lovely photographs! I would suggest that nothing be changed, simply because the photograph looks pleasing, and I'm certain the family wouldn't mind the bright shirts. If you were really adamant on decreasing the brightness of the shirts without decreasing the brightness of the rest of the photograph, you can use a mask to isolate the shirts, and then adjust their exposure independent from the rest of the photograph. This is coming from the film maker within me, but I would suggest bringing along a white bounce card to bounce any available light onto the other side of their faces to make the shadows softer, so that we can see details in both sides of the face.

Just curious, what camera were you using for these shots?

[Dave.Cox]

I do see a bit of a blue cast in the shirts, but I don't think that they are too white. The blue jeans, however should be blue. I don't really think this is too dark either. The only thing that I would do would be to remove the blue from the shirts.

[Daviskw]

Hi there

On the second image you may want to try Shadow/highlights.

Butch

[grannysdc]

did levels.. mostly used history brush (Screen and Multiply) to bring out (lighten) the shadows and darken the highlights.. hue/saturation layer and adjusted Yellow, green, blue... converted to Lab.. sharpen in lightness channel... back to rgb.. levels again

[Alison]

Originally Posted by photoze34

Hello Forum!

I'm a newbie to the forum and also photography (1 year). I am quite challenged when photographing anything white.

In this case, I recently photographed a family. They wore white shirts and blue jeans. In most of the photos the white shirts are blown out / overexposed. Someone told me if the color reads 255 255 255 then there is no hope to fix.

I stumbled across this forum and saw the great work of the experts so I thought I'd try my luck and hopefuly you guys can help me out so I don't have to do a reshoot.

I shot these photos in both JPEG and RAW. I use Photoshop CS2 and new user of Lightroom.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
AJ

Hi AJ,

Whoever gave you that info is quite correct - burn outs, or blow outs carry no information.

Remember that the sun is your enemy , or it can be your friend as well. In the standing image, you have the family in the shade, I would have stood where they were and had the family stand where you were. Try out some filters i.e. polarising filter, which can be extremely useful in bright sun conditions.

Both images had a strong red colour cast. I've tried to improve them a little, but I think the blow outs might ruin the printed image - try it anyway, you might find that a larger image reduces them a little.

[BillFrey]

Hi photoze34,

Since you shot in RAW, I'd convert again and address the blown out areas. You can convert twice, once for the whites and again for the rest. With those two layers you can mask in where necessary.

That said, desat'ing the whites on this jpg makes the blown out less glaring. I also would add a little magenta to the greens and remove a little magenta from the blues. I tried it and it looks better to me, but since I didn't address the problems with the blown out skin, I didn't post the results.

Good luck

[photoze34]

Thanks for your feedback and great suggestions. I shot these with a Nikon D200.

All the best,
AJ