Over Exposed Background

[ernie.grimes]

Can someone tell me a good procedure to repair over exposed background in the

following photo. I have CS2 & lightroom

 

Thanks for your help

Ernie

[ronald_moravec1]

Really bad. Make a new background and paste the subject onto it.

 

Next time use fill flash.

[santer36]

i would just deal with cropping it out as much as you can

[patricklavoie]

dirty a bit your white using a curve, if you shoot in RAW, maybe you can get better details? Not much to do with this one.

[phule]

Make it black and white.

[emre]

...and add grain.

[randmcnatt]

Blow out the background, add lots of soft focus, then convince them you wanted it that way all along.<div></div>

[ellis_vener_photography]

try using the exposure and recover sliders in Lightroom

[van_camper]

"Blow out the background, add lots of soft focus, then convince them you wanted it that way all along" Rand McNatt

 

I like that answer...funny. I was going to say change the background, but that is a repair job while the above implies you knew what you were doing. LOL. Always look at the background before shooting. It is part of the picture and deserves equal attention in portraiture.

[mike_stemberg]

..or find the most unappealing background you can find.. the pair will never mention the photograph again ;-)

[justin_langley]

Hi Ernie,

 

Begin by creating a new layer on top of the image. Color in the sky with a pleasant blue color. Next, double click on the layer to bring up the layer style dialog box. At the very bottom of the box, there is the "Blend If" controls (there are 2 black to white sliders). On the slider for the underlaying layer, slide the black slider to the right. Next, hold down the alt key and you can split the black slider. This will adjust the gray values. Continue to drag it to the right. When you have the image close to the way you'd like it, click ok. Next, set the layer to "darken" on your layers palette. You may have to mask a few areas in the blond woman's hair and skin tones to keep the blue color from overlapping. That should do it.

 

If you feel that the repair is above your head, I run a small photo retouching website, www.FixUpPix.com , and would be happy to repair the image for you.

 

Thanks,

Justin<div></div>

[j_sevigny]

Blown highlights are pretty much just gone. I like Justin's approach, but maybe with not so heavy of a hand on the sky. You're never going to recapture lost detail in those lost highlights so your best bet is probably to "gray them out" a little.