Restoring Color to Areas of a photo Blown white by Flash

A tutorial for intermediate level users of Photoshop.
 One of the problems we face when taking photos with a flash, or even in bright sunlight, can be that color can be washed (blown) from some areas.

Original photo, with color blown from cheeks. (Her cheeks have lost their skin tone and appear white)

This is the result we want - natural sun highlights on cheeks, but not blown.

These are the color values for the cheeks. Much too white! The flash has hit the areas and blown the color to some extent.

I have a technique for putting the color back into photos that were blown white by flash. It’s not the only way, but it can help with some difficult images.

1. I’d use the lasso tool in this instance, to select the face, like this.

2. Feather the edge, as appropriate. That means, low radius for low res image like this one (5 pixels works) but you’d use a higher setting for an image at higher resolution.

    To do this: Right Click on the selection, select Feather. Enter the appropriate setting. Click OK.

3. Bring up Levels (ctrl-L). We’re going to change the white point to fix this area.

4. There are three eyedroppers at the bottom right of the dialog box. Double-click the white dropper. This will display the Color Picker.

5. In this case, I then clicked on a skin tone that was closer to what I wanted.

    To do this: Hold the mouse pointer over the photo instead of the color picker and the eyedropper tool comes up, allowing you to take a color sample from the photo itself.

But the cheeks should be lighter, so once you have the color, you want to choose a lighter tone. Make sure “Only Web Colors” is NOT checked on the bottom left corner of the color picker.

6.  This is the color we’re going to set as the white point. So now you just click OK.

7. The color picker will close, but Levels is still open. You also still have the white eyedropper active. (If you don’t, then click it again.)

8. With the eyedropper, click in the lightest area of the cheeks.

9. This will blend the cheeks nicely into the rest of the image, giving them natural color.

Sometimes, in a portrait for example, you don’t need to select the face area to do this, but in this image we didn’t want to set the other white items - crown or the pearl earring - to flesh color, so selecting was necessary.

10. The program will ask you whether you want the new color to be the new white point. You really don’t, so remember to check it next time you open Levels.

Christine Frey is an instructor at Eclectic Academy (http://www.eclecticacademy.com)