OverExposed Night Shot

I inadverdently Overexposed a lightning shot a couple nights ago .. if i tamper with the 'color' in a simple program like GIMP I can see the lightning stroke as a grainy blech in the photo.. is there any way in photoshop to turn down the exposure to a point where i can define the stroke of lightning in the shot or should I chalk it up to another in my long series of 'attempted lightning shots but not quite' .. any help would be awesome .. the big problem is usually when I shoot lightning I have my Canon set to RAW but for some reason I reset the dial in settings back to Large JPG so I believe the photo is going to be a toss out as we all know the limitations of jpg vs raw photos..

Thanks in advance :)

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Permalink Reply by Jake Ripley on May 3, 2008 at 7:31pm: I have a feeling your gonna have to junk the photo. But try changign your photo over to 16 bit (if it wasn't already shot in 16) then mess withy our shadows & highlights, if you can't get it through that, get it as close as you can, then try the exposure bit. thats how I would go about it atleast...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Rob on May 4, 2008 at 12:21pm: thanks for the recommendation it did not seem to help .. I did manage to get a really interesting picture of what a lightning bolt would have looked like if it had been underground I guess lol I will post it a little later once I m satisfied with the results ... yah one of the first things I did was pop it to 16 and did not change any thing .. my fault for not checking my settings .. if it were in RAW I could have easily extracted what I wanted .. I even have a specialized filter I made ( in my meandering around in photoshop elements ) to help get me close

thanks again for the help ... :); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jake Ripley on May 4, 2008 at 5:50pm: good luck, looks like u might have to mark this one down as a smack ont he forehead haha; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Brett Hollifield on June 2, 2008 at 1:53pm: you have adobe lightroom?? it does a great job with changing/modifying exposure settings along with individual colors or highlights and saturation. its a great program especially for me, since i am primarily film and sometimes over/under expose images.; ▶ Reply to This