Recover blown-out skin and overexposed dress in Photoshop

In this tutorial by Unmesh Dinda from Piximperfect you will learn the Easiest way to recover details and remove overexposed highlights in Photoshop. Learn how to fix blown out skin or recover the details in the dress by utilizing the fundamental concepts of blend modes, channels, and adjustment layers. Without the need to make any precise selection, automatically target the overexposed areas.

The first objective is to target the bright areas. By using the RGB Channel you can easily make a selection based on luminosity. Which means, bright areas will be selected and dark areas won’t. Then, putting only the bright areas on its own layer, you can easily change the blend mode to “Multiply”. Now, “Multiply” is such a blend mode which darkens things. Applying Multiply to just bright areas will darken them enough to recover details.

Watch tutorial

Get tutorials & freebies delivered to you.

Subscribe to the Photoshop Roadmap newsletter, a weekly roundup of new tutorials, insights and quality downloads, trusted by 6500+ readers.

Retouching Pet Portraits in Photoshop: Cleaning Fur, Eyes, and Fine Details

Pet photos rarely arrive perfectly clean — staining around the eyes, discolored fur near the mouth, and stray hairs are common problems that need fixing before any serious portrait work begins. This workflow covers how to remove those distractions manually using overpaint and fur brushes, then finish with eye enhancement techniques...

How to Overpaint a Dress and Add Lace Overlays in Photoshop

A plain or unflattering dress doesn't have to stay that way after the shoot. By overpainting directly onto the fabric and layering lace overlays on top, you can reshape, extend, and completely restyle clothing in post — without reshooting. This walkthrough covers the full process: extending the canvas, painting...

How to Use Floral Appliqué PNGs to Create Fine Art Portraits in Photoshop

High-resolution floral appliqué PNGs on transparent layers open up a straightforward path to fine art portrait compositing. By combining them with subject cutouts, blend modes, clipped adjustment layers, and foliage brushes, a standard photograph can take on the depth and texture of a painted piece. Watch the Video Practical...

How to Remove Skin Blemishes and Fix Skin Tones in Camera Raw

Two recent additions to Camera Raw make skin retouching significantly faster: an automatic blemish removal tool with separate controls for moles and freckles, and a vectorscope-based skin tone indicator for correcting off-color skin. Both features work non-destructively inside a smart object workflow, so no pixel data is...

Portrait Retouching in Photoshop: Smooth Skin While Keeping Natural Texture

Smooth skin and natural texture are not opposites — achieving both at once is the mark of a professional retouch. This workflow covers blemish removal, flyaway hair cleanup, dark under-eye correction, and eye brightening, all while keeping the skin looking like skin. Watch the Video Practical Tips These key points...

How to Use Camera Raw's Blemish Removal Tool in Photoshop

Camera Raw 18.5 introduced an automatic blemish removal tool that does something previous solutions rarely managed: it removes skin imperfections while preserving the underlying skin texture. It also distinguishes between temporary marks and permanent ones like moles, giving you separate controls for each. Watch the Video Practical Tips These...