help -- over-exposed corner

[bigkidjr]

Hi everyone. I've got this photo of a cemetery that I really like (I think it's an interesting shot) but the upper right hand corner is overexposed and I can't for the life of me figure out how to fix it. I've tried brightness/contrast, burn tool, adjust backlighting, equalize, and other techniques of this nature, but nothing really seems to be doing the job. Any advice you might have for how to fix this (and keep it consistent with the rest of the photo) would be most appreciated!! I'm using photoshop elements, so I don't have curves, channels, etc. to work with. Also, I've saved the photo as a low quality jpeg for the purposes of uploading, so some of the details may have gotten lost...

Thanks for your help!!

[Conk]

The easiest thing that comes to mind is to clone in the area by sampling the trees.

[svsg]

some solutions when you don't have layers,curves and levels.

1) I haven't used PE, so this reply is based on what you have described. If you have selection tool(even free hand select will do), use that along with brightness/contrast.

2)If you have windows, it comes with a default MS paint. It does not support layers like photoshop, but there is an elemntary function like layers. There will be 2 boxes beneath the paint tools. You can toggle between them to superimpose images with transperency sorrounding the copy/pasted piece. MS word has some picture editor with brightness/contrast etc. You can use the free hand select of Paint for selecting arbitrary shapes. I know my explanation is not clear, but you can play with this easily and understand(there are not many options in them).

3) You can use Gimp(a free tool for win/unix, if that is the reason you are using PE instead of PS).It comes with all those layers, curves and stuff.

[T Paul]

Well I don't have Elements, but I believe it's pretty similar to PhotoShop....


The way I see it you have three options:
1. Paint the sky blue
2. Replace the sky with another one
3. Clone over the sky with the existing trees


Using Photoshop to Paint the Sky

1. Use the Magic Wand and select the blown out sky. Then go to SELECT and SIMILAR. This should get all the little white areas of sky showing between the trees. You may have to adjust your tolerance setting in order to get more or less of the area you want. If you get more than you need, like some of the tombstones’ highlights get added, go into QUICK MASK MODE and deselect those areas.

2. Once you have the area selected, copy and paste onto its own layer and name the new layer SKY.

3. Now control select this layer. Marching ants should show the area that is white. Use the airbrush tool and paint in blue (with the areas selected your airbrush should only paint inside those areas). Try different settings and colors at low levels to give a slight gradient look and depth to the sky.

4. You may have some sharp edges show up. Just use the blur tool on your sky layer and soften any edges that appear unnatural. Also adjust the opacity settings as necessary.

5. The great thing about doing all this on its own layer is that you can erase any mistakes that you made without affecting the original image.

6. When you have the image the way you like it. Flatten the layers and save your revision.

Another way once you have the area selected is to use hue/saturation and select the colorize box and just recolor the white sky to blue by adjusting the hue, lightness and saturation bars.

Using Photoshop to Replace the Sky

If you have a good sky picture that you would like to use in place of the existing one
1. Open up your image
2. Paste the new sky in on its own layer below your original image
3. Select the white sky from the original picture and delete. Now the sky from the layer below should show through.
4. You may have to blur it a bit to soften the edges and help them blend more naturally with the photo. You also may need to adjust the opacity of the layer until it looks natural.


I've attached a version I did by just painting the sky.

[Flora]

I don't have Elements either ... but if it lets you work with Layers you could also:

1) Create a new empty Layer (Blending > Overlay) on top of your Background and, with a soft (fuzzy) Black Brush (Opacity 5-10%), paint over the faded areas.

2) Create a new empty Layer (Blending > Soft Light) on top of the previous Layer and, with a soft (fuzzy) White Brush (Opacity 10-30%), paint over the dark areas to lift the shadows.

T Paul explained beautifully how to replace the blown out sky.