For today’s photo I decided to show what can be done in Adobe Camera Raw to save blown out highlights. In this photo, as you can see, a good portion of it is way overexposed. The photo was done at ISO 400, 1/125 second, f/8.0. The overexposure is mainly due to the reflection of a very bright sunny day off the white wall. Exposing for the wall would have left no detail on the interior of the building, so shooting it like this, then correcting in post was the best option.
In Camera Raw, I underxposed the entire photo. Then when I opened Photoshop, I set the inside of the window back to normal exposure. Then I underexposed the very middle part again and added some saturation to the greens. This is the final result.
Most cameras may not be able to record as much of the blown out highlights as this one, but even a little bit of highlight recovery can save your photos.
– Don
