Recovering details from over light saturated spot in a photo

[S J Damson]

Dear All

Does anyone have any suggestions to how I might recover details from the top right of the photo below and lower/reduce the glare?

I've tried playing around with the following:

• Brightness and contrast - the best case is that it just makes things darker with out bringing out any details
• Playing around with the luminosity range layer and then playing with various blending modes - I don't think i really know what I'm doing so it was a bit of a Hail Mary;
• Played with HSL - but that just shifted it to one colour depending on where I shifted the sliders.
• With all of the above I tried using a mask so I could determine the affected area but that just made it look out of place (on top of the changes not looking very good anyway).

Thanks 

[walt.farrell]

Do you have that as a RAW image? Or is it only in JPG or some other already-developed format?

[smadell]

If the original is a Raw file, then there's a glimmer of hope. If you're just dealing with a JPG file, there is probably no way to create detail in a completely blown out area of white.

If you do have a raw original, try developing it without applying a tone curve. Or, apply a "linear" profile, which sometimes helps alleviate blown out highlights and whites.

(As I am typing, I see that @walt.farrell has given you essentially the same advice.)

[S J Damson]

Unfortunately I hadn't changed the setting in my tablet to keep a RAW copy of the photo (I've already made the changes on my phone).  I'll be making those changes now.

However (Smadell) your advice isn't wasted as I've got a couple of photos that I have in a RAW format that have similar issues to the photo above.  i'll try your suggestions.

Regards

Nizam

[PaulEC]

If you have another photo with a similar background, it may be possible to replace the blown out area with that.

[smadell]

1) I hope that your raw files give you the results you're looking for. If you're developing in Affinity Photo, tell the Develop persona (via the Assistant) NOT to apply a tone curve. (If you're on a Mac, you'll need to use the Serif engine, not the Apple engine.) When you're developing, bring the Exposure down significantly and then raise the shadows as needed. If there are details available in that blown out white area, this is the likely way you'll find them.

2) When you're shooting, overexposing the sky is so easy when you expose for the darker areas around you (the "landscape"). Try exposing more for the sky, and let the ground and surroundings stay a bit under-exposed. This avoids the blown-out, no detail areas of sky that are otherwise so very easy to end up with!

[Lisbon]

17 hours ago, S J Damson said:

I've tried playing around with the following:

• Brightness and contrast - the best case is that it just makes things darker with out bringing out any details
• Playing around with the luminosity range layer and then playing with various blending modes - I don't think i really know what I'm doing so it was a bit of a Hail Mary;
• Played with HSL - but that just shifted it to one colour depending on where I shifted the sliders.
• With all of the above I tried using a mask so I could determine the affected area but that just made it look out of place (on top of the changes not looking very good anyway).

The first thing I do is check if there are actually details to recover. This saves me a lot of time.
If you add a curves adjustment set to multiply and duplicate this adjustment 3 times this is is the result.

As you can see there is not enough detail that can be retrieved. The background remains white and many parts are missing.
When this happens, i usually replace the background with something else. Ideally, use another photo taken at the same location.