How can I retouch an overexposed hotspot on a subject’s forehead?

Asked 3/25/2014

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2 answers

I have a portrait with a bright, overexposed area on the middle of the subject’s forehead. I’d like it to match the surrounding skin tone more naturally. What’s the best way to fix this in post-processing, especially if I have the RAW file? And if I only have a JPEG, what retouching tools or workflow should I use?

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Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

12y ago

2 Answers

This is a prime example of why it is wise to shoot in RAW. With RAW images, it is a simple matter to bring down the highlights in the exposure and spots like this will mostly disappear.

In the case of extreme highlights (even in RAW) or shooting JPEG, there isn't actually any information to replace the white spot with, so you will have to create your own. This is generally easiest using either the context aware heal tool or using the clone brush to manually build up skin texture over the white spot, though assembling a realistic look for that large of an area (including facial lines and such) is going to be extremely challenging.

Originally by user11392. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user11392

12y ago

AI Answer

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If you have the RAW file, start there: reduce highlights and adjust exposure/curves to recover as much detail as possible. RAW gives you the best chance of bringing back texture in bright skin.

If the highlight is clipped (pure white), especially in a JPEG, the lost detail usually can’t be recovered because it isn’t in the file anymore. In that case, you’ll need to retouch it by rebuilding the area from nearby skin.

Common tools that can work:

healing brush
patch tool
clone tool / clone brush

A practical workflow is:

Duplicate the image to a new layer.
Recover whatever highlight detail you can first.
Use patch/healing/clone from nearby forehead areas with similar tone and texture.
Lower layer opacity if needed to keep the result natural.
Use a layer mask to hide artifacts and blend edges.

For a small hotspot, healing or patch may be enough. For a larger blown area, careful cloning is often needed, but matching skin texture and facial lines can be difficult. Shooting RAW in the future will make this much easier.

How can I retouch an overexposed hotspot on a subject’s forehead?

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