Fixing Blown Highlights in Photoshop

Recovering lost highlight detail is virtually impossible in Photoshop. Here is a handy little technique to recover them.
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Here is my starting image.

The area around the nose is just a little bit too hot for my liking and as its virtually devoid of all colour and tone if I just use a simple recovery method like curves its not going to look realistic.
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So what can be done?
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I'm going to use the Clone Stamp Tool and Blending Modes to get the result.

1. Press CTRL+J to duplicate your current layer (so I am not working on the original image and I can easily revert to my starting point if needed) .

2. Select the Clone Stamp Tool and change the tools Blend Mode to Multiply.

3. Change the Opacity of the Clone Stamp Tool to 20%.

4. Sample an area of skin that is not too blown out by holding down ALT, your cursor will change and click the area of skin you want to sample from.

5. Keep resampling and painting over the area you wish to fix, paint over the same area several times to change the opacity of the effect.

Here is my end result:



Article including images copyright of Gerard Foy Photography.
www.gerardfoy.com