Fixing Overexposure

Let's start with a picture of me that a friend of mine took. Sometimes you forget to set your camera to auto when you pass it to a friend, and you end up with an overexposed picture that makes you look more pale than you actually are.

 First, create a new adjustment layer under either the "Layer" menu or the Adjustments section, and select "Exposure." Below are the settings I used. These will be different depending on the picture.

Next, duplicate your background layer, and drag it above your exposure layer. Set it to the saturation blending mode, and set the opacity to 70%, or whatever looks good.

Next, make another adjustment layer. This time make a "Brightness/Contrast" layer with the following settings, or whatever looks good.

And here we have the final product. It's still a little bright in some spots, but it's better than what we started with. You can fix these spots with the burn tool.