Photoshop advice/how to please

[jonny_bravo]

Ok,. so what would you guys do about the white burnt out area in the image below please?,. My wife would quite like it as a canvas, I messed around blending 3 raw conversions to get it looking like it does - unfortunately the burnout is the consequence

[VxDuncan]

Hard to say without seeing the RAW file and the data contained within. Normally I'd (using adobe camera raw) load up the raw file, get all the sliders correct for the beach (thus blowing the sky), ensure no noise reduction or sharpening is on (2nd tab) and click okay. Then load up the raw file again with the same slider settings (should be saved automatically by PS) then adjust the exposure slider to minus 1 or so EV, to give the same effect as a one-stop ND grad. Obviously you can use 2 stops or so if needed. Clicking okay will bring this up as a separate window. Then it's a case of loading the second window as a new layer on top of the first, so you have one psd file with the correctly exposed beach on the bottom (with blown sky), correctly exposed sky on the top (blown beach). Then create a layer mask on the top layer to show the bottom layer where the beach is. In this case you've got a decent waterline and good contrast on the LHS, so I'd probably use a rectangular selection tool to get all the bottom up to the waterline, then add to that selection using the magnetic selection tool, going round the dark rocks. Then it's a case of feathering the selection sightly (prob 1px) and creating the mask from the selection. If the waterline was anymore complicated I'd create the mask using paths as they are far more adjustable, but this one is quite simple. You should now be able to adjust the opacity of the top layer to vary the effect of the darkened sky. Once you have that create a new layers adjustment layer and adjust levels to suit the whole image, and save and then resize/sharpen for your target.

And relax.

[jonny_bravo]

Thanks for that info,. I will give it another go from scratch again.

[VxDuncan]

Re reading what I put it wasn't very clear... Basically you make one file with two layers, one where the beach is correct, the other where the sky is correct, but the beach to dark (not blown as I said). Then add a layer mask to make the dark beach transparent to show through the correctly exposed layer below.