Image Over exposure

[photoshopclinic]

One studio that I work for recently did a wedding. In a couple of key photos the faces are over exposed to the point where they're just white with eyes and a mouth - hardly any detail.

I've got back as much as I can using recovery tools (Camera Raw), but mainly now foreheads are causing a problem.

I've tried frequency separation to try and edit the colours, tried editing the highlights, tried multiplying layers, but nothing seems to be working.

Are there any techniques which you can recommend for bringing detail & colour to a highly over exposed image?

[KTG]

I don't know if this will help, but there used to be a long-time poster here under the name of ByRo who developed a Color De-clipping action to fill in blown out areas specifically for skin areas. I looked in the Retouch Pro Tutorial section but didn't see it listed. You might try searching on this site.

k

[Tony W]

Would be good if you could post an example of the problem areas. If there is truly nothing left in any channel then you will have to resort to faking it

You could try sampling skin texture from other areas and using this to paint into the highlights combine with painting over with layer set to Color mode after sampling the nearest skin tone may be of help

[John Wheeler]

I agree with Tony about posting an example. There are some images where you can recover to an acceptable level. That said, unless you have other example images from which to very carefully and exactly recreate skin textures etc, the bride and groom are going to know that something is off especially when compared to other images that did not have this issue.

If you can not make the images spot on with tools, I suggest one of two paths
1) Don't include this photos in the package or
2) If possible, offer to do a reshoot for specific images and have the photographer eat the cost.

You have a lot more by including bad shots in the package. You don't want these two images to be the ones that they always remember and therefore how they feel (and recommend) about the photographer.

First step in making a good decision in a bad situation is to acknowledge reality and move forward from there. Just make sure you are not staying in denial about what can be done. Just all IMHO of course.

[mistermonday]

I go along with all of the above advice from other RP members. As for recovery, posting the RAW file would be a good place to start. The reason is that different RAW converters will recover weak highlights to a different extent. ACR is not known as the best RAW converter.
Depending on the area of blowout and the surrounding texture (or lack thereof), there are methods of inducing color into blown out areas using a Selective Color adjustment layer or a technique using a temporary conversion of the image from RGB to LAB color.
If all those attempts fail, then re-shooting the subjects in a similar setting so as to capture the faces and composite them into the photos with the blown out faces may be a reasonable approach to follow.
If there are existing photos of those subjects available where the head position and lighting is within reasonable proximity to that of the blown out shots, you may be able to copy / paste / mask / match color.
But it would be best to post an image or a section of the image.
Regards, Murray

[SilvaFox]

Nothing + Nothing =

[stormyboy]

Originally Posted by mistermonday

I go along with all of the above advice from other RP members. As for recovery, posting the RAW file would be a good place to start. The reason is that different RAW converters will recover weak highlights to a different extent. ACR is not known as the best RAW converter.
Regards, Murray

Murry,
What is your preferred raw converter, or do you try various ones depending on the image?
Tom

[andrewrodney]

Now is a good time to download the beta of Lightroom 4 and give the new Process Version 2012 a try on highlight recovery (for raw data). If you truly did clip the raw data, you are hosed. But it is possible you can pull out a bit more detail with less of the older highlight recovery ugliness with the new beta.