How to fix overexposed photos, and what clipped white has lost

What a slider cannot bring back

Pure white has nothing in it. Adobe’s help for Lightroom Classic defines clipping as pixel values pushed to the highest highlight value, and says clipped areas are completely white or completely black, with no image detail.

Part of it sometimes can. The same page: if at least one colour channel in a clipped area still has colour, some detail might be recovered from it; under the Recovery slider of the older process versions (PV2010 and PV2003), it says Lightroom Classic can recover detail in raw image files when one or two channels are clipped. Its clipping indicator turns white when all channels clip, and coloured when one or two do.

What that means for a white sky. A sky that keeps colour in one channel may give some detail back; a sky clipped to white in all three has none to give. That is our reading of Adobe’s two sentences, not a sentence of Adobe’s.

Photos on a Mac

Apple’s Photos guide for Mac: double-click the photo, Edit, Adjust, then Options below Light. Seven sliders appear: Brilliance, Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Brightness, Contrast and Black Point. Black Point sets where the darkest parts become completely black, which Apple says can improve the contrast in a washed-out image. Holding Option over a slider extends its range; double-clicking a slider resets it; Auto lets Photos choose.

Google Photos

On a computer. Google’s help gives photos.google.com, the photo, Edit, Adjust, then a dial for each setting, on a device with at least 4 GB of RAM: Brightness for overall lightness, Highlights for detail in the brightest areas, White point for the brightest value. Revert undoes the edits later.

On Android. In the Google Photos app the tools are under Edit, with Brightness, Contrast and an HDR effect in Adjust; Google says Edit › Search finds a tool such as Brightness by name. Save changes the original; Save as copy keeps it, and changes saved as a copy can’t be undone. Google lists 3 GB of RAM and Android 8.0 or later for most editing features.

Raw files. Google Photos converts a raw photo to JPEG when it edits it in its own editor, and offers the original raw file for download to an editor that handles raw, naming Lightroom and Photoshop on the web and Photopea.

Lightroom, slider by slider

Lightroom on the web. Edit, then Light: Exposure for overall brightness, Highlights to the left to darken highlights and recover details, Whites to the right to make more colours completely white. Adobe’s page was last updated on 28 April 2026.

Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw: an order. A procedure on Adobe’s help site, based on a contribution by Todd R. Shaner and applying to Lightroom 4 and later and Camera Raw 7.0 and later, but not to the cloud-based Lightroom desktop app, works from the top down: Exposure for the mid-tones, then Highlights until the blown-out areas come back, Shadows, then Whites and Blacks with the Alt or Option key held to see where clipping starts, then Contrast, and a last touch to Exposure. Its target ranges put Highlights on the 70–90% levels and Whites on 90–100%.

Auto. Adobe’s tone page says Auto in the Basic panel sets the sliders to maximise the tonal scale and minimise highlight and shadow clipping.

Before the next photo, on an iPhone

Tap and drag. Apple: the camera sets focus and exposure itself, and face detection balances exposure across faces. Tap where the focus should go, then drag up or down next to the focus area to change the exposure.

Lock it. Touch and hold the focus area until AE/AF Lock appears; tap the screen to unlock. Or tap or swipe up from the camera modes at the bottom of the screen, tap Exposure and drag the slider: it stays until Camera is next opened, unless Settings › Camera › Preserve Settings › Exposure Adjustment is on. On supported models with Camera Control, a light double-press opens an overlay of camera settings, where Exposure can be selected.