How to Fix Over Exposed Background

Did you do the first part in Elements?   Is there a video you know of I could watch to learn how to do that?  Otherwise I am clueless....

Sorry; no video that I know of; others may have been doing exactly what I did for years, but I just sort of stumbled on it myself.

Yes, everything is done in Elements, except for me using NIK (in Elements) on the finished product.

The first step is simply a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer; in the Layers palette, click on the little half-black/half-white circle to open the adjustment layer menu and select Brightness/Contrast.

I then slid the Brightness left to -60 and the Contrast right to +28; these numbers just looked to be what I was after = enough darkness and contrast so that the limbs and leaves stood out from the sky without becoming obscured.

I clicked on the Foreground color square; a color selector appeared, and I moved the little picker circle to midway up on the far left side = neutral grey.

I then painted over the main tree trunk so as to lessen the effect of the Brightness/Contrast on that particular part of the image (on layer masks - Black completely hides, White completely reveals, and neutral grey hides/reveals 50/50 --- lighter shades of Grey reveal more - darker shades of Grey reveal less)

The Brightness/Contrast layer is below the sky layer so that it has no effect on the sky.

So long as the Brightness/Contrast is beneath the sky layer, you can click on the little gear thumbnail on the Brightness/Contrast layer and the editing dialogue will appear; thus, you can make adjustments with the sky layer in place and fine tune the settings to your liking.

Once you get the sky and tree like you want it, then you can Layer > Merge Layers while holding the Alt key and this will yield a complete finished layer consisting of the layers beneath; you do the NIK to this layer.

The NIK is completely optional and not a vital part of the process.


I am not very good at explaining things; I hope this makes sense and is understandable.                                                                                                                                                                      

Thank you very much Sepiana!!!

I would start with the RAW image, ignore the sky since it will be replaced anyway, and make the rest of the image look as I wanted; then, do the sky replacement on the resulting jpeg.

For what it is worth, I watched the video; and, while - no doubt - he knows what he is doing, his method is quite complicated compared to the method I used on the example I posted.



 

I thought the same thing Buckskin, that his way was very complicated. 

I came back here to look at your instructions, and copy/paste them to my computer, especially since you said you got it done in under 2 minutes!

1. When you first brought up that Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer, there should have been three adjustment sliders, Brightness, Contrast, and Midtone some-such-or-other; you can move the sliders or just enter the numbers in the little boxes.
If the adjustment layer is already in the layer stack, such as in your example, double-click on the little gears icon and it will open back up and you can then move the sliders or enter the numbers.
You don't have to use the same numbers that I did; you can change them to suit your eye.

2. I clicked on that layer mask thumbnail to select it (make it active); I clicked on the little foreground/background color squares thing and chose Medium Grey from the color-picker; and, with a soft brush, I painted the tree truck.
You don't have to be meticulous about this; just sort of get close to the edges; it does not have to be perfect.

3. That thing is hollow and rotten.

4. One way is to click the cursor in front of any part you want to eliminate; then, hold Shift and click the end of it; this should highlight the selected part and turn it blue; hit the Delete key and it should disappear.

Hopefully someone who is better at explaining things will provide a better explanation for number 4.

Charles,

You brought up the same Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer as BuckSkin. The difference in the thumbnail icon can be easily explained. He is using PSE 7; you are using PSE 2020. This change was part of the massive overhaul of the PSE interface Adobe did back in version 11.

The three sliders he is talking about have to do with a different adjustment -- Shadows/Highlights. It's not available as an adjustment layer; it's accessed via Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Shadows/Highlights.

NOTE:

Adobe made a change in the Shadows/Highlights dialog. In earlier PSE versions, the default percentage for the Lighten Shadows slider is 25%. Starting with PSE 11, the default is 35%.