Fixing a highlight blowout.

[Jaedon]

Here is a shot I took over the weekend of my wife's friends Tatoo.

The colors are right and I love the image but when I try and deal with the highlight all I get is greying out instead of anything usefull. All the work done so far was on the RAW file. I did a quick save to web for this shot.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Jay

[another view]

Hi, I moved this thread to Digital Imaging. Unfortunately, when an area is blown out there is no information in it (by definition) so I don't think there is a good fix for it. Occasionally with a small area, the clone tool in Photoshop can help but I don't see that as an option here. Sometimes a little blowout makes things look more natural IMO.

In this case, having a diffuser would have lowered the contrast on her and would have avoided this problem. There are other ways to control contrast like moving into the shade but all of the best options I can see in this case would have happened at the time of capture.

Here's the reflector/diffuser that I have - it's a diffuser with a four-sided reflector cover, giving you five tools in one.

[natatbeach]

always better to avoid the problem prior to---but for the after fix---Steve is right on---here's a little help from the clone tool---5 minutes---sure you could way do a more accurate jobe---but just an example for ya.