Adding Detail to Very Light Areas in a Black and White Image
I have experienced a number of problems when working with my old Guatemala and Yucatán black and white images. Some of the images did not have enough detail in the light areas. I tried to solve this in both Camera Raw and Lightroom 2 using some of the settings, but for certain purposes, I was not satisfied. This is really very simple to do using the Multiply Blend Mode.
Step 1 - Select the white image and copy and paste it to another layer. Notice the white area is devoid of details.
Step 2 - Change the Blending Mode of the selection layer to Multiply. Notice that now you have detail in the white object.
Wasn't that easy!