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description
Recovering badly blown highlights needs an adjustment far stronger than anything that would look good across a whole photo. This Quick Tip resolves that by pulling Highlights all the way down inside the Camera Raw Filter on a Smart Object, then opening that filter own Blending Options and raising the Blend If shadow slider so the correction only lands where the image was actually overexposed.
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How to Fix Overexposed Photos in Photoshop
This Quick Tip recovers blown-out highlights using an aggressive Camera Raw Filter adjustment, then restricts that adjustment to just the overexposed areas with a Blend If slider so the rest of the photo stays untouched.
Converting to a Smart Object
Right-clicking the layer and converting it to a Smart Object first keeps the Camera Raw Filter applied afterward fully editable and revisable later.
Opening the Camera Raw Filter
Going to Filter, then Camera Raw Filter, applies Camera Raw’s adjustments to the Smart Object as an editable Smart Filter.
Lowering Highlights Completely
The Highlights slider is dragged all the way down, an intentionally extreme adjustment meant to pull back as much detail as possible from the blown-out areas of the photo.
Why Go This Far
Pushing Highlights to its full negative value recovers the maximum amount of detail Camera Raw can pull from the overexposed areas, even though the same adjustment would look far too flat and dark if it applied to the entire image.
Opening Blending Options for the Filter
Double-clicking next to the Camera Raw Filter’s thumbnail in the Layers panel opens its Blending Options, giving access to the Blend If sliders for that specific filter.
Blending Options Belong to the Filter, Not the Layer
Because this dialog is opened from the Smart Filter entry itself, the Blend If settings applied here affect only the Camera Raw adjustment, not the layer’s own separate blending options.
Raising the Shadow Slider to Hide the Effect There
Raising the shadow-side slider in Blend If hides the highlight-recovery adjustment from the photo’s darker areas, so the extreme Highlights reduction only shows up where the image was actually overexposed.
Keeping the Fix Contained to Where It’s Needed
Without this step, the same aggressive Highlights reduction would darken the entire photo, not just the blown-out areas; the Blend If slider is what limits the correction to exactly the region that needed it.
More Free Photoshop Tutorials
- Three Ways to Use Blend If
- Correct Color and Exposure in Photoshop
- Bring Back Lost Detail from Your Shadows
Why This Technique Works
Recovering severe overexposure usually calls for an adjustment stronger than what looks good across the whole image, which is exactly the tension Blend If resolves. Applying an extreme Highlights reduction and then hiding it from the shadows with Blend If means the correction can be as aggressive as the overexposed area actually needs, without dragging down the rest of the photo along with it.
Final Thoughts
Fixing an overexposed photo comes down to an intentionally extreme Highlights reduction inside the Camera Raw Filter, then a Blend If adjustment that confines that correction to just the blown-out highlights, leaving the rest of the image exactly as it was.
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