Correcting Over Exposure on this shot

[Nigel O’neill]

You could try adding a touch of contrast and using colour curves to reduce the washed out look, but note that that would apply to the overall image. I have shot outdoor weddings where you have such huge contrasts and had good results.

In future, you might want to consider using a neutral density filter for outdoor shoots such as this.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, GTX570, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 12 (x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Mike Kujbida]

Derek, see if this trick helps (courtesy of user malowz on the Sony Vegas Pro forum).

Put 3 filters, “Invert” (at 100%), “Color Corrector”, “Invert” (at 100%).
Then lift up the gamma of the color corrector in the middle.
This darkens highlights first, in the logarithmic fashion, more like a “iris closing” way.
You can also put a color corrector secondary to select reds and lower the gamma a bit.

Here are screen shots of my FX settings and the corrected shot.
This was a very rough attempt and I’m sure you can do better by playing around more than I did.

[Aaron Star]

You would have to look at what info is actually in the camera master clip. The posted JPG is clipped, so there is only so much reducing levels is going to do. You may have a better results on the master file. If you want to share the master clip to dropbox, people would most likely help you.

[Derek Hammer]

I really appreciate the help guys (sorry for the late reply).

After posting I tried putting a copy of the video on a new layer, then making a blurred mask around the actor’s face and only adjusting the brightness/contrast of that area. If that doesn’t look good in the final export I’ll try your method Mike. Thanks~

[Richard Jones]

I’ve used this technique several times and had a great deal of success using levels or colour curves in the masked area (i.e. on the faces).

Richard