Blown Out Windows in Real Estate Photography - need the fix

[Drone360 (Fred)]

As a professional real estate photographer, we are always plagued by “blown out” windows on a sunny day, as we try to bring the outside indoors. having the outside in clarity as the inside is very important, especially in the higher-end properties, and indoor shots on just about any architecture, residential or commercial.
Having the ability to box-in a window frame and/or window pane and separately control the lighting, color and clarity is a great enhancement to this specific industry and can make a King out of photo editing software for real estate…

[sgospodarenko (Svetlana G.)]

Hello @Drone360 and welcome to the forum,

Thank you for the suggestion. Please, do not forget to vote (top left corner) for it by yourself as well.

Regards,
Svetlana G.

[mwsilvers (Mark - New Jersey, USA)]

@Drone360

As a professional real estate photographer, we are always plagued by “blown out” windows on a sunny day, as we try to bring the outside indoors. having the outside in clarity as the inside is very important, especially in the higher-end properties, and indoor shots on just about any architecture, residential or commercial.
Having the ability to box-in a window frame and/or window pane and separately control the lighting, color and clarity is a great enhancement to this specific industry and can make a King out of photo editing software for real estate…

Have you tried using local adjustments? I’m not a real estate photographer but in my experience they should be able to give you the results you want.

Mark

[Joanna (Joanna Carter)]

@Drone360

As a professional real estate photographer, we are always plagued by “blown out” windows on a sunny day, as we try to bring the outside indoors.

Have you tried exposing for the sky and recovering the interior? Having said that, if the difference in exposure is more than the dynamic range of the sensor, you are never going to capture it all without HDR, or fill lighting on the interior. The only other technique I have seen used in the film industry is to cover the windows in neutral density film.

[John-M (Melbourne, Australia - Win10)]

@mwsilvers

Have you tried using local adjustments?

As Mark suggests, Fred - Local Adjustments may well be your answer:

You could use either a Control Point or an Auto Mask to limit your correction to only the blown-window … and then reduce the Highlights slider, to see if that helps.

PL cannot tho, of course, recover details that are completely blown-out … that would need a different exposure approach (as Joanna suggests).

HtH - John M

[Fixx]

Best would be if DPL would have HDR function (combine two exposures to one file).
Local adjustments would be helpful if it could be masked sharply rectangular as windows tend to be.

[John-M (Melbourne, Australia - Win10)]

@Fixx

Local adjustments would be helpful if it could be masked sharply rectangular as windows tend to be.

That’s readily do-able using LA Control Points.

John

[OXiDant (Peter)]

I did a example in tutorials of getting the blue out a windowglas , the same can be used in this matter.
The statue in doors.
Edit. Found it.

Tutorials DxO PhotoLab by the user

Hy all, just for fun, learning and exercise: i was rereading this section and it hit me in the face, i didn’t build any partial pre-sets for WB/color control.Probably i am not experienced enough, or didn’t had the right images to create a partial pre-set as “tool”. We where messing about in color, WB, detail, contrast, finecontrast : the “pop” so to speak. (The new colorpicker radius feature got me on this track) . Which(messing with colors) is on it’s own a good way to train/learn to control…

[Drone360 (Fred)]

Hello All,
All great suggestions! All much appreciated! I wish it was a bit quicker/easier to frame the glass in a rectangle for the sake of speed and accuracy, especially when doing a whole home or apartment complex. I will give these a try.
Many thanks!

[Egregius ((Greg) - Windows 11)]

Another tool in the toolbox is the spot-weighting mode of the Smart Lighting adjustment. It can help get the global exposure optimal before making local adjustments and other global adjustments.

[Drone360 (Fred)]

Hi Peter,
Nice tutorial. Great job and the change looked natural which is what it is all about.

[mwsilvers (Mark - New Jersey, USA)]

Here is an example. How much you can retrieve will vary from image to image.

Mark

Original image

Before editing window

After editing window

[Drone360 (Fred)]

Hi Mark,

Many thanks for the submitted work. I have used that successfully, I thought, during the short time I had for the trial. I figured the ability to do a rectangle to condense the local edit would be better. In your example, this is what I would accept and it didn’t affect the frame of the nearby person. It looks great.