Different light in various parts of photo: I think that this image is beyond repair, unless you have some suggestions. This photo was taken in southern India, during a brutally hot...

ediesaul

I think that this image is beyond repair, unless you have some suggestions.

This photo was taken in southern India, during a brutally hot day.
How do you handle a shot where the sun washes out the background building?

Thanks very much for your comments and suggestions.

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rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Spot meter on the background building. Then, increase exposure per your camera's capabilities. In processing bring the darker areas up in brightness to your liking. Then darken the shadows, again to your liking.
--Bob

SnappyHappy Loc: Chapin, SC “The Capitol of Lake Murray”

My advise is to bracket exposure then process in HDR or create your own mask to blend in the background. Hope this helps

ediesaul

rmalarz wrote:

Spot meter on the background building. Then, increase exposure per your camera's capabilities. In processing bring the darker areas up in brightness to your liking. Then darken the shadows, again to your liking.
--Bob

Thank you for the suggestion about spot metering. I think the washed out building has no details in it.

ediesaul

SnappyHappy wrote:

My advise is to bracket exposure then process in HDR or create your own mask to blend in the background. Hope this helps

I forgot about that!!!

Thanks so much. I'll have to keep that in mind.

jak86094

As for shooting the picture, you could lower the exposure 1-1/2 to 2 stops and still have detail in the shadows while capturing details in the highlights. This can be done a number of ways depending on your choices in exposure settings. In any event, you can set Exposure Compensation for a minus 1.5 to minus 2 stops. (Exposure Compensation may be set up in 1/3 stop increments, so just adjust accordingly, e.g., minus 1-2/3 stops instead of minus 1-1/2).

Was the photo shot in jpg or RAW? If the latter, you may have much more latitude in salvaging the highlights. Some of the building is showing, and that may be a hopeful sign. If you use a decent post processing application (Lightroom or Photoshop would be great, but others, including the camera manufacturer's application, will also work), lower exposure and highlights and perhaps contrast and see how much of the "blown out" building can be recovered. Nice picture anyway. Thanks for sharing and good luck. jak

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

With a modern digital camera there is no need to meter anything when a significant part of the scene is in broad daylight if you are using raw.

Just use Sunny 16 - f/16 @ 1/ISO sec or equivalent like f/8 @ 1/(4xISO), etc. Then recover the shadow information during the raw conversion.

If you only shoot JPEG you will need to bracket to get the shadows with HDR.

ediesaul

jak86094 wrote:

As for shooting the picture, you could lower the e... (show quote)

I always shoot in jpeg, not raw. Have tried different methods to recover blown areas. Alas, when one is keeping up with a group, and SO much to see, a more experienced photographer than I would have captured this image in a much better way. Thanks for your comments.

ediesaul

selmslie wrote:

With a modern digital camera there is no need to meter anything when a significant part of the scene is in broad daylight if you are using raw.

Just use Sunny 16 - f/16 @ 1/ISO sec or equivalent like f/8 @ 1/(4xISO), etc. Then recover the shadow information during the raw conversion.

If you only shoot JPEG you will need to bracket to get the shadows with HDR.

I think bracketing and HDR would have been the way to go, if I had thought of it.
Thanks for your comments.

Linary Loc: UK

What you have is what you have got, I would be inclined to mask out the upper of the background building and replace it with sky. Then you can get a decent photo from what remains. The stone carvings alone will be worth while.

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

Linary wrote:

What you have is what you have got, I would be inclined to mask out the upper of the background building and replace it with sky. The you can get a decent photo from what remains. The stone carvings alone will be worth while.

I was just working on this

The simplest way to REPAIR is to use the clone tool to make the area all blue (#1).

#2 is what Linary suggests. Several ways to do this. If I recall, Edie (good to see you in PP Forum btw!), you don't work with layers, but if you'd like more details on how to achieve a sky replacement when using layers, let us know. We've had a few tutorials in the section recently and links to videos I'll search for also.

.

Cropped to show sky area.
Cropped to show sky area....

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bleirer

I agree that there is a lot of latitude in raw, but I am not so bold to trust one EV for all shots. To me each scene is unique, one might have important shadows that will end up noisy or devoid of any detail at all when recovered. Same with highlights. I guess I'm in the expose to the right camp, placing all my shadows as high as possible without blowing highlights. This shot has blown highlights, unrecoverable I think. You could try to select small areas of the blown out section at a time then use the healing brush in 'replace' mode and pick up building texture from below, basically building a new building.

I agree that blown highlights are not recoverable, on the other hand "I have a histogram and I know how to use it" and as long as the highlights aren't pushes over the cliff allowing more photons to reach the sensor is always better. I found this to be a balanced discussion of the pros and cons of the different approaches. https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-exposure-techniques.htm

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

bleirer wrote:

...You could try to select small areas of the blown out section at a time then use the healing brush in 'replace' mode and pick up building texture from below, basically building a new building.

This could be fun, very challenging but fun

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

One way to fix the sky in this photo is to put a background in that seems to match up with the image.

Since someone else had done some work on your image I felt it was ok to do that.* You might consider using a background with the image. I used one here with this image and then did some burning on it to darken the highlights. This is only one possibility. The background could have been stronger and it would have covered the building completely. I could have also simply made this background somewhat darker, the choices are many when using textured backgrounds.

*moderator's note: I changed the rules today

See:
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-593297-1.html

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Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

I'd kill some of the blue on the statues too.