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simonf76280524
Participant
October 25, 2017
Answered

Change overexposed white sky to blue

  • October 25, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 14946 views

Hi,

I'm struggling to fix the sky in one of my photos. The photo is overexposed, so the sky is 100% burnt white (there is even a weird white/grey stripe pattern in it, but I don't know if that's lightroom or an artefact of the camera sensor.)


I made a perfect selection of the white sky, however all the adjustment controls (including the coloring) have no visible effect, because the area is 100% white I presume. What can I do to fix this?

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Correct answer Rob_Cullen

Unfortunately Lightroom will not do what you need.

Even setting the Brush to a blue color will not paint on a blank white area.

Setting the brush to a color will only add a tint to areas where tone already exists, so not a blank white area.

You will need to open the image in a pixel editor (Photoshop, etc) and paint in the sky, or use a 'sky' image to layer and mask.

Screen-clip: Is the effect of the one Brush set to Deep Blue in different areas of tone.- (on a monochrome image)

1 reply

F. McLion
Community Expert
F. McLionCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 25, 2017

Is it a RAW file? If not, that can not be done.

If it's a RAW file, depending on the amount of the overexposure it still can not be done.

If the file contains no color at all at this location (read as: all 3 color channels 100% white) there is nothing to recover.

Then, you can only 'paint it blue'

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simonf76280524Author
Participant
October 25, 2017

Hi, unfortunately, this one is not a raw file. Also the area is 100% white, so I have to "paint it over", however I yet have not figured out how I can do that with lightroom.

F. McLion
Community Expert
F. McLionCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 25, 2017

Use the Adjustment Burch (hit K) and select a color by clicking on the box with the 'X' next to Color.

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