Help in reducing blown out sun

I took this photo yesterday. What you are seeing is the unretouched image
with only recovery done in Lightroom at 100%.

I have think the photo has potential but no matter what I do, It is overwhelmed by the over bright sun.

I am what I consider an advanced beginner in CS5, I have pretty much tried all I know. Does anyone have any suggestions as how to reduce this blown out sun.

I appreciate any help in advance.

GG

I used your photo and made -0.75 and a +0.75 exposures and made an HDR in photomatix...

Garry I actually dont mind the blown sun I think it doesn't detract from the photo over all. It is rather bright and sometimes there just isnt much you can do about that. You can do HDR with a scene like this as Ed has attempted but with just one photo you dont really have the flexibility you do with more. Read up on HDR and your problem may be solved.

In a situation like that, the sun is just about always going to blow out. It's normal. If it is important that it doesn't, just take another shot from the same position, but 3 or 4 stops underexposed from your first shot, then combine the two in Photoshop.

My attempt, PSE highlight & shadow tool application, and a touch of Bleach Bypass Pro.

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Beautiful photo!

I think it's good as it is, but here's a technique that I have used before if you want to give it a try. It is quite subtle but will at least eliminate the completely blown bright white area and will be unnoticeable if you are careful. I'm describing it as I've done it in Elements 9.

1. Use the Eyedropper Tool to select a bit of the faint yellow color close to the blown out area.

2. Use the Magic Wand Tool set to a tolerance of about 10 and click in the middle of the blown out area.

3. Do a Refine Edge of about 4 pixels on your selection.

4. Switch to the Brush Tool and set it to 20% opacity and zero hardness.

5. Paint over the selected area until you get the desired effect.

Sometimes it helps to hide the selection boundary while you work using Ctrl-H. If it doesn't look right, try again with a different color, selection area, feather, etc. For extra control make a new layer before you start painting. For even more subtlety you can apply a mask to the new layer and feather the newly painted area even more using a low opacity, soft black brush on the mask. You can also adjust the opacity of the new layer.

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Thanks guys for all of your replies. I will try a couple of these techniques. I think at this time I just want to minimize the blown out area and live with it.

again Thanks much

The original picture looks good and needs a very light hand to enhance it. There's almost nothing you can do about a blown out sun as there's nothing there to recover. Over-processing will ruin the rest of the picture as the other photos demonstrate.

Honestly, of what's been posted so far, I like the original the best. There's nothing wrong with blowing out a portion of your photo from the sun.

qQ1

KJacques wrote in post #13462276
The original picture looks good and needs a very light hand to enhance it. There's almost nothing you can do about a blown out sun as there's nothing there to recover. Over-processing will ruin the rest of the picture as the other photos demonstrate.

Agreed!!!!

Once the sensor captures blown out pixels there is no data to recover, it is what it is. It is the opposite of film. In the film days people would expose for the shadows and then correct the highlights in the darkroom. In the digital days we need to expose for the highlights and correct the shadows in PP. You just can not recover highlights that are totally blown out, there is no data to recover.

With that said, the image look fine as-is, and much better than the HDR attempt. Your photo looks natural, which is good.

The best thing for this shot would have been a Reverse GND filter. It would have made all the difference. Your second option would have been a multiple frame AEB set, probably 5 frames covering -4 to +4 at that time of day and with the sun where it was. Trial and error is how we learn.

Sorry, I couldn't resist it.

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Too funny, actually was using a .9 hard grad filter. Sun was still too overpowering. If I had
used less exposure to deal with the sun, I would have way too little exposure on the water.

Would an "HDR technique but not HDR look" work here - i.e. expose two shots one for sun and one for the foreground and blend the two in post-processing with simple layer technique? Obviously can't do in hindsight but thinking for future.

There's nothing wrong with blown out highlights as long as it works with the image and it doesn't cause a loss of detail where it's important to have detail. I think a lot of people tend to look at blown highlights as a flaw in an image, and in some cases it can be, but that's not always the case. This is a great example, there really is nothing wrong with that image (well, I'd rotate it some), it's very well exposed.