Fixing an Overexposed Photo in Lightroom

Sometimes there are certain photos of your kids that just stand out to you as ‘yep’ that’s my girl! For me, this is one of those photos. So, needless to say, I was a bit disappointed that it was so overexposed. I really wasn’t sure if it could be saved, but I was determined to try. It was shot in RAW, so I was hoping that would help increase my chances of fixing it.

 At first, I thought maybe I could just reduce the exposure. While this did improve the photo, it caused some strange contrasts on the face and cheeks.

I then tried using the recovery slider, but it only accentuated the strange contrasts.

 Through trial and error, I discovered that the best solution, for this photo, was to reduce the brightness and increase the blacks quite a bit. I also fixed the white balance at this point, since I could now see what I was working with. (I would normally do this step first.)

 And lastly, since my Nikon likes to do wonky things with bright pinks and reds, I made some final Lightroom adjustments to the Red Hue Saturation and Luminance.

After finishing my Lightroom edits, I opened the photo in Photoshop for some slight under-eye touch up and teeth whitening, a bit of eye pop, final sharpening, a curves adjustment to fix some background color issues and a soft light layer for a bit of pop. Here is the final before and after photo.

While the skin is still much brighter than what I would normally edit a photo, I am happy to be able to recover this photo to a usable state. (And also happy that all my photos aren't so horribly exposed and requiring so much help!! LOL!)

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Have a blessed day! Thanks for stopping!