unwanted facial highlighting

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Digital film tools has a tool that can do the opposite – adding a fill light to a poorly lit part of the video – so maybe you can reverse the effect for your needs:

https://www.digitalfilmtools.com/powerstroke-ae/fill_light.htm

Aharon Rabinowitz
Email: arabinowitz (AT) yahoo (DOT) com
All Bets Are Off Productions, Inc.
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[Steve Roberts]

[Dave LaRonde] “When you overexpose a subject, you have essentially thrown away the detail in the bright parts.”

Sorry, Dave, you’re being too nice — there’s no “essentially”. The detail is gone. Thrown away. Not there. By saying “re-create the detail”, you mean “paint in every pore, wrinkle and shadow by hand”, no? 🙂

And to John, when we take a white blotch and bring it down, we get gray. If we add colour, we get a pink blotch. (sorry, I assumed caucasian) If the area around the blotch is all the same colour, then you could possibly use the replace colour effect to replace white with that surrounding colour … but if the area surrounding the blotch has variations in colour or tone, you’ll notice the blotch. Still, try replace colour. You might have to apply it to a masked dupe of the footage so you don’t pinkify things like teeth and eyeglasses highlights.

We’ve all heard about bringing down the highlights — the only way to do that and get the detail back is on-set, with powder, or by reducing the light or exposure. Powder is best. Make the CEO sit still for it! Show him a shot of a bald guy with a shiny head! All of this before shooting, of course. 🙂