How have great exposure but not blow out white pants?

[KevinCarter]

JOhan, thanks, I just played around with curves and it's hopelss and just too nebulous for me. If you like to send a screenshot of what you do please do

[Ed Gerson]

Fill flash.

[Johan_Elzenga]

Originally Posted by KevinCarter

JOhan, thanks, I just played around with curves and it's hopelss and just too nebulous for me. If you like to send a screenshot of what you do please do

A curve like this one should open up shadows and keep the rest of the image from being washed out. The idea is that you lift the lower part only, and make a slight 's'-curve in the remaining part to keep contrast in the mid tones. Fill Light is a lot easier though, so if that works well enough, use that.

[Noel_Carboni]

Please shoot an image one half to one stop underexposed, and post it. It doesn't have to be big. I'll be happy to suggest a process that will leave you with both a natural looking image and one with good highlight detail.

Understand that there is NO WAY to recover blown highlights, so if you want highlight detail you MUST expose for the highlights and bring the darker parts of the image up during development or processing. There's a lot of good information on how to do that above, and I'll wager there are more ways that will yield surprisingly good results for you.

I have been toying with the idea of creating a Photoshop action that will reduce brightness and increase contrast in nearly blown highlights without overly darkening the rest of the image. I shot some images of swans that I was experimenting on, but others will be welcome.

-Noel