Over exposed/blown out pictures?

[ammorgan]

My husband took this picture of my son and I at the zoo and I love the shot but some of it has way too much light in certain areas.

How can I correct this in Photoshop or Paintshop Pro? And what are some hints for making sure it doesn't happen next time?

I have a Kodak EasyShare CX7530.

 

[ANDS!]

Theres not going to be a whole lot you can do about those overexposed areas. In future, just be careful what you're using to set exposure - camera though you needed more light so thats why it tossed that spots on there.

 

[ammorgan]

I've got this picture that I took the first time we went to the zoo and it didn't turn out bad like that one up there did.

I played with my camera after I did that post and am writing down different things about each setting that I used.

 

[ammorgan]

I just realized the first picture I posted is actually after I auto corrected it with Paintshop Pro. This is the original

 

[PhotoPhoenix]

hm. you should be able to make that photo look better. you could use a curve layer to bring down the highlights and just apply it as a layer mask and paint in only yourselves. might work a little good..i don't know what your skill level of photoshop is though..

 

[ANDS!]

A curve layer isn't going to accomplish what shes looking to do; theres no way (at least as far as I know) to recover data from the overexposed areas short of having shot it in RAW.

 

[glaston]

You can recover that data to some extent.
It will require a bit of effort though. Especially since the quality of the image overall isn't good.

Your best bet is to take a new photo and don't make the same mistakes.

But if you NEED to work this image, you'll essentially have to recreate the parts you want to recover.
It will be a little bit tedious, but you'll have to copy the parts in question to a new layer, zoom in, and paint the detail back in by using the burn tool and normal paintbrush tool.
Mess with blending modes and layer masks.

I've had to do it before, and it sucks the first time you do it.
It's hard to know when it's done too. You just have to work with it til your satisfied and then STOP.
Or else you'll tweak it forever and still never be satisfied.