Blown highlights?

Question

When a highlight is blown (all detail lost) it is my understanding that the detail that was there is lost forever. My girlfriend however insists that she can bring the detail back from a blown highlight by pulling curves in PS. Personally, it's my opinion that she thinks she can because she can make the highlight look normal. Can I get a ruling on this? Is it possible to retrieve details in a blown highlight?

Fhoto, my question was not how to avoid blown highlights. This I know. This disagreement actually arose while I was helping a more inexperienced photographer interpret histograms and "blinkies".

Answer 1

Blown = 255 on the histogram. Anything above 255 contains no additional information. However, some things that are *apparently blown* (just below 255) can be salvaged using curves, shadow highlight (which uses a totally different algorithm) or a variety of other techniques. Further, images that were shot in RAW can sometimes have their highlights salvaged due to the increased dynamic range that is captured (recorded just past the edges of the histogram and can be pulled back in during RAW conversion).

Other than that, as the other answerers stated, you can clone or burn, but in that case you are disguising the blown highlights not recovering them.

So if its *truly* blown beyond even the increased dynamic range of the RAW file if applicable, then no it can't be "recovered."

Answer 2

Everyone above me is correct. I'm just adding another vote for your side of the argument. If a highlight is really "blown," it's simply not there. If it's a little overexposed, it's not really "blown" and you might be able to burn in a little bit of detail and play with the contrast on a specific selected area.

If it's not more than 10-20-30 pixels, you might just fill it in and nobody would notice, but you'd have to create any "detail" that you wanted. It will not magically appear.

But the answer (as everyone else has already said) is, once a pixel is blown, it's gone forever.

Answer 3

Some highlights are more repairable than others in my experience. I've found that most highlights that rest on concrete are easily repairable. Highlights on the face are not easily fixed. Sky highlights can be oftentimes made to look better, but not fixed. But you win the argument. Anytime there is a true highlight, there is absolutely no information to work with to bring it back. Cloning is an option, but there is no way (again, depending on how severe of a highlight) to bring the true detail back from highlight hell. Your girlfriend might be thinking of bringing back shadow detail, which is MUCH easier. Film and digital both have tradeoffs. Besides film having a wider dynamic range and a wider exposure latitude, it also captures highlight detail much, much better than digital sensors can. Consider watching a movie shot with film and one shot with digital back to back to get a comparison. Digital does, however, retain a whole heck of a lot more detail in the shadows than film does. Most shadow detail in film is lost forever. Hope this helps!

Answer 4

Blown highlights are areas with no information. You can burn them, but that just darkens them, still no info. Curves and levels will adjust the lighter areas, but if you look carefully there will be no detail in the pixels that are actually blown.

Answer 5

You can't make something from nothing. All you can do is try and make the blown out areas look as best they can.

You can slo try anad clone in detail from other areas to compensate....but you can't bring back what is not there.

Answer 6

It's true, adobe has a photography program that is out of this world, She might clone it.