Step 1: Add a Curves Adjustment
To start, you need to make the photo darker by applying a Curves Adjustment.
With this adjustment, you can darken the photo by bringing the “spline” down.
Step 2: Use Blend Ranges
Darkening the photo fixed the overexposed areas, but it also made our shadows too dark. To solve this, we can use Blend Ranges.
To open Blend Ranges, press on the gear icon at the top of the Layers Panel.
To prevent the Curves Adjustment from darkening the shadows too much, bring the 3rd node down halfway.
Step 3: Add an HSL Adjustment
Whenever you dramatically change the lighting in a photo, the colors will need to be adjusted as well. In this image, the colors are looking a little washed out.
To fix this, apply an HSL adjustment.
Using this adjustment, increase the Saturation slider.
The colors are brighter now, but they look a little too red. To fix this, bring the Hue slider to the left, which will counteract the red by introducing a little more green.
And that’s it! Now you know how to fix bright images in Affinity Photo 😊