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Home arrow Tutorials arrow Retouch arrow Correcting Overexposed Detail Using Channels

 

Correcting Overexposed Detail Using Channels Print E-mail

overexposure correctionWhen using a compact digital camera you can often get a picture with a good overall quality and some flatness in detail. If you have a look at the histogram of those images in different channels, you'll see that one or two of them are too close to rejection boundary. This means a case of overexposure and loss of detail, but... you can save the photo with those channels that are not spoiled and have full information.

You can use up to 10 channels, including RGB, CMYK, and Lab in hard cases. But in the given example RGB channels were enough to make the picture better and give it more volume.

Here's the original picture with the problematic areas marked.

rose image


You can see the fragment and its red channel with almost no details visible.

Image fragment

Blue channel fragment

Step 1.

Highlight the blue channel in the channel pallete. It has enough detail in it and, at the same time, is not too dark as the green channel is.

Blue channel


Step 2.

Duplicate the channel and save it as a new document.

duplicate the channel

Step 3.

Go to Image>Apply Image. Use the document you created out of the blue channel as a source. The blending mode is Lighten. Opacity is 80% but should be adjusted individually. The same is true about the blending mode.

Apply image

See the final result:

Final result

The effect can be achieved by different means, of course. Having a light object you better choose Darken as a blending mode, for a dark object - Lighten. Or it can be Hard Light. The object will define it. Same is with the Opacity. And even the proper channel for applying should be found through experiments.