How to recover details in overexposed areas of a photo?

Blown-out areas are honestly a really tricky thing, because there's literally no information in those pixels - everything's just burned to white. But there are a couple of options that might help. If the shot's in RAW format, you've got better odds - there's more data in the bright areas. In Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, try sliding the Exposure slider into the minus, then work with Highlights - sometimes you can pull out some details. If it's completely blown out, tools like Shadow/Highlights or local corrections with a gradient will help, so you can darken just the overexposed zones.

For more complicated cases, it makes sense to use specialized plugins and AI tools - they sometimes recover texture pretty convincingly. Photoshop, Capture One, DxO PhotoLab all have decent algorithms for recovering highlights. But honestly, if a face or important detail is completely white, there's no magic fix - better to reshoot. The main thing is, next time expose for the bright areas so you don't lose detail in the brightest parts of the frame.