Recover Highlights & Shadows

A frequent rescue: "the sky is white, or the shadows are pure black, and I want detail back." This recipe covers global recovery first, then local recovery via masks for stubborn cases.

When recovery works

Modern RAW files typically have 2–3 stops of recoverable detail in highlights and 3–5 stops in shadows. JPEG files have far less, recovery on JPEGs often produces noise and banding instead of detail. RAWs are far more forgiving.

If a highlight is completely clipped (RGB = 255, 255, 255 across a wide area), there's no data to recover. RapidRAW will reduce brightness but not invent texture.

1. Open the photo and check the histogram

Press A to toggle the analytics panel. Look at the histogram:

Spikes against the right edge = clipped highlights.
Spikes against the left edge = clipped shadows.

If both edges are jammed, you'll need both halves of this recipe.

2. Set baseline exposure

Open Adjustments (D). Move Exposure until the midtones look right, ignore the highlights and shadows for now. This sets the baseline.

3. Recover highlights

Drag Highlights down (negative). For an obviously blown sky, start at −40 to −70. Watch the histogram: the right-edge spike should pull away.

If you need more recovery, lower the Whites slider too (negative). Whites controls the absolute white point; pulling it down compresses everything just below clipping.

Don't worry if the image looks slightly flat at this point, Step 5 will add contrast back.

4. Lift shadows

Drag Shadows up (positive). For a typical underexposed foreground, start at +30 to +60. The dark areas should reveal detail.

Lift Blacks up if shadows still look too plugged. Blacks moves the absolute black point, a small positive value (+5 to +15) opens up shadow detail without flattening the image.

5. Restore midtone contrast

Now that the extremes are tamed, the image often needs midtone contrast back. Two options:

Quick: drag Contrast to +15 to +30.
Precise: open the Curves panel (in Adjustments), select the Luma curve, and add a gentle S-curve. Add a point in the lower third, drag down slightly. Add a point in the upper third, drag up slightly.

Curves give finer control without re-clipping the recovered tones.

6. (Optional) Local recovery with a mask

For really stubborn highlights, say the sky is bright but you don't want to flatten the rest of the image, use a sky mask.

Open Masks (M).
Click + New Mask → Sky.
Wait for the AI to finish.
With the mask selected, drag Exposure −0.5 to −1.0 and Highlights −30 to −50.

Now the recovery only affects the sky. The rest of the image keeps the contrast you just dialled in.

For shadows in a specific area (e.g. an underexposed face): use Subject mask, then push Shadows / Brightness positive on the masked region.

7. Check for noise and color shifts

When you lift shadows hard (+50 or more), two things can appear:

Noise, particularly chrominance (color speckling) in the shadows. Right-click the photo in the library and choose Productivity → Denoise. See Batch Processing → Batch denoise.
Color shift, recovered shadows can pick up a magenta or green cast. Use a small Tint correction in the Color panel, or push Shadows Tint in Color Calibration.

A worked example

Let's recover a typical sunset shot: bright sky, dark foreground.

Exposure +0.5 (overall lift)
Highlights −60 (recover sky)
Whites −20 (compress upper tones)
Shadows +50 (open foreground)
Blacks +10 (lift crushed shadows)
Contrast +25 (rebuild midtone punch)
Vibrance +20 (sky color comes back)

Total elapsed time: about 30 seconds.