A washed out photo is usually fixable up to a point, and the point is worth knowing before you spend time on it.
Areas that are merely too bright still contain detail, and pulling the brightness down brings it back. Areas that are pure white contain nothing at all. No adjustment recovers them, because there is no information left to recover, and pushing harder just turns white into grey.
Contrast is usually the real fix. Overexposed pictures look flat because everything has been pushed toward the bright end, so the difference between light and dark has collapsed. Restoring that separation does more for the image than brightness alone.
Work in small steps and compare against the original. It is easy to overcorrect into something that looks harsh and artificial, which reads as worse than the washed out version you started with.
Start by lowering brightness to about 85 or 90 percent, then raise contrast to between 105 and 115 percent. Bright photos look flat because the lightest tones have crowded together, and a little contrast spreads them out again. Move one control at a time and watch the preview.
The Soft preset can calm harsh highlights, and a small rise in saturation brings back the colour that bright light washes out. Detail that is completely white, such as a burned out patch of sky, has been lost in the picture itself, and no setting can bring it back.
No. Pure white areas hold no detail to restore.
Brightness down slightly, then contrast up. Contrast usually does the most work.
No.
Brightness around 85 to 90 percent and contrast around 105 to 115 percent. Adjust by eye from there, because every photo is different.