Pull down the Highlights slider in Google Photos to bring back detail in a blown-out white sky, without darkening the rest of the photo too much.
What you need
- The photo, saved to your phone or computer
- Google Photos, free, on your phone or at photos.google.com
- About two minutes
What this can and can’t fix
This only helps a sky that’s overexposed but not completely blown out. If the sky recorded as pure white with no detail at all, there’s nothing there to bring back.
How to recover the sky
- Open the photo in Google Photos and tap Edit, then Adjust.
- Find Highlights and drag it down.
- Watch the sky until some cloud detail or tone reappears.
- Check the rest of the photo hasn’t gone too dark; nudge Shadows back up slightly if it has.
- Save a copy.
Check the sky shows some detail
The sky should show some texture or tone instead of solid white, while the main subject in the foreground still looks correctly exposed.
If pulling Highlights does nothing
If pulling Highlights down does nothing, the sky was likely fully clipped with no detail recorded – no editing tool can recover information the camera never captured. For finer separate control over sky and foreground, Photoshop Elements’ Shadows/Highlights tool can go further than Google Photos’ sliders.
Next step
If the lighting looks uneven across the rest of the photo too, see Even out uneven lighting across a scanned photo.
Sources and date checked
Google Photos Help Centre, checked 22 September 2026.