Lightroom correcting a small amount of overexposure

missmoloko

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Hi Guys

I am completely new to lightroom normally use photoshop. But I have heard that if you overexpose a small area you can bring it back in lightroom.

Any tips on how I just cannot figure it out. It keeps wanting to change the exposure on the whole image. I am a bit thick as far as lightroom is concerned mind so you will have to explain in simple turns.

Any help please!!

MIssmoloko:bonk:
 
Its the recovery slider....

Hit J and the over exposed highlights will go red

Move the slider and the amount of red should reduce....
 
You can do in ACR too when importing to Photoshop.
 
Hi

I have used the slider on the red bits its worked a little but think I still need to use the brush a little. Althrough I can't for the life of me figure out how to do it.

Any tips please - told you I was new to lightroom, sorry If I sound a bit thick.
:bang:
 
Think of the brush as a burn tool, with a bit more sophistication.

Select the brush tool and and select more or less exposure depending on the action you want to do. Don't worry if it turns out to be greater than you wanted, you can adjust this easily later. I'd also select "Auto Masking" it's at the bottom of the panel. This heps you to keep the brush within the area you are working on.

Now select the size of the brush. You can do this simply by using the wheel of the mouse. Alternatively use the slider. Now simply paint over the area you need to adjust. As I said don't worry if it too much. It's probably a good thing as you can see more clearly where you are paining. If the auto mask doesn't constrain the painting area and you paint in an area you don't want too, hold down the <ALT> key. The turns the brush negative and allows you to "Rub out" your mistake.

Now when you have finished working on the area, you can still adjust the strength of the correction by using the exposure slider. This adjusts the correction in real time so you can get the result you need.

Should you want to go back and make additional adjustments at a later stage , simply click on the brush tool and you'll see a "pin" appear on the image. This denotes the where you started to make the brush adjustments. Click on the pin and the selection becomes active. You can now use the sliders to make corrections to that area.

Adobe have some good videos on using the tools in the develop module so nip over there. Also check out "Lightroom Killer tips" very usefull.
 
Note that if the overexposed part is completely blown then you won't be able to recover it.
 
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