Help - can you advise me on how to get rid of/darken down the sunlight on the side of my niece's face. I don't know the technical term, but if you do, I might be able to find it on an app as I only use my iPad. Thanks
If you shot in Raw then might be able to recover some of the detail but as @swilde says "blown out highlights" sums it up. I took it into Photoshop to have a look and the info for the bright part of the face shows RGB of 255,255,255 - totally white, nothing there but white.
@lynnilou It does take a lot of getting used to doesn't it? I am going on a Lightroom course tomorrow because up until now, I just haven't been able to get on with it. Perhaps that will change tomorrow...
Not sure how you could recover on ipad, a simple(ish) view on saving an image in this state can be viewed here, sadly does need layers and photoshop. http://youtu.be/QcTWoyPz_4U
In Lightroom or Aperture and if you were using a "proper" camera and shooting in RAW then you might be able to retrieve something from the blown-out highlights with Highlight Recovery. However, given that @creampuff says the highlights show as solid white then I think it's beyond recovery: that part of the image is just too far over-exposed.
Lightroom is now available for iPad - it requires you to pay a monthly fee to Adobe (another topic). But if it can be recovered, you can indeed do it on your iPad!
In Lightroom, try sliding the "Shadows" up and the "Highlights" down. Increasing clarity a bit can also help.
To be honest, the darks (by her right arm) look too dark and the highlights in her face are to bright. So you likely have a histogram that looks like a bathtub :-)
This is a common problem in real-estate photography too. Bright light from a window and dark rooms inside simply have too many stops of light for our poor cameras to handle. The best solution would have been to use a flash to make the inside of the room as bright as the outside. Or another option would be HDR to capture the highlights and low lights in separate images.
You can try an editor, but if the highlights are blown out 100% white, well detail is gone and you are stuck. On the other end, same for shadows. On the other hand, you can judiciously clone in tone areas, and especially in an editor with layers, you can get great control over the blending. Probably won't work great on a jpeg though.
Another way to shoot it better is to underexpose significantly so you won't blow the highlights, and then pop up the flash perhaps at low power to fill in the shadows on the face. It's a simple technique many people don't think about, flash in bright sunlight.
For shots like this I would recommend an app like Pro HDR. When you take a photo with the app it will automatically adjust the lighting for you, and the whole shot will be beautifully balanced right from the iPad camera.
Tweets ahoy!
Join the Group
Pin With Me
In Lightroom, try sliding the "Shadows" up and the "Highlights" down. Increasing clarity a bit can also help.
To be honest, the darks (by her right arm) look too dark and the highlights in her face are to bright. So you likely have a histogram that looks like a bathtub :-)
This is a common problem in real-estate photography too. Bright light from a window and dark rooms inside simply have too many stops of light for our poor cameras to handle. The best solution would have been to use a flash to make the inside of the room as bright as the outside. Or another option would be HDR to capture the highlights and low lights in separate images.
Another way to shoot it better is to underexpose significantly so you won't blow the highlights, and then pop up the flash perhaps at low power to fill in the shadows on the face. It's a simple technique many people don't think about, flash in bright sunlight.