Highlight recovery

OK I took a shot that involved a lot of dark that needed detail plus some red plastic coated wire that reflected bright sunshine so the bright areas have burnt out.

In ACR I can use recovery to recover some of the highlights but it really messes with the histogram and I suspect when I use levels or whatever the burnt out areas will simply come back..

In general terms will I be better just living with it or apply (a lot of) recovery?

Thanks

Mike

Hi Mike

I'd try it both ways. Preserve the original and try using recovery on a copy of the file. See how you get on.

One other suggestion is to make copies of the original and alter exposure in ACR for each one. Then use the Merge to HDR function in Photoshop. I know it exists in Photoshop CS4 but not sure about previous versions.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will try both ways but I shall steer clear of the HDR thing as it always seems to totally stuff up anything I feed to it! The fault lies with me I know but it seems a complex way to go about things. I can get bad results much quicker

Mike

you should be able to lasso the area and then you will get marching ants around it and then you can treat the hightlights

James

You can also try Shadow/Highlight in Photoshop CS.

Good idea the lasso. Or create a vector path and turn it into a selection. Then you can copy the selected area to a new layer and apply whatever editing you need to the layer. Shadows/ highlights, selective colour change or anyfhing else you want.

Mike, if the highlights are totally burnt out then there may be nothing to recover. If this occurs, moving the recovery slider up will only result in the "burnt" parts becoming off-white, without any detail coming back.

I find you can recover more detail from shadow than from highlights, although you do run the risk of increased noise or even banding.

How about cloning out the offending areas, or copying some similar part that isn't burnt out?

It would be easier to be specific if we had sight of the image.

Thanks guys I shall try the various suggestions. I do use the cloning technique on burnt out areas. I wouldn't wish to subject you to the image in question as it's not good in other ways too. It was the general technicalities that I was wondering about.

Mike