In practical applications charge-coupled imagers (CCI's) should be immune to picture degradation due to excessive local optical overloads while maintaining large dynamic range. Our analysis shows that a 500 × 500 CCI will have a sensitivity approaching the I-SIT (within a factor of 10) and an intra scene dynamic range of approximately 1000:1 for a scene contrast of 0.2. However, to maintain useful operation under excessive local overloads (up to 105), some type of blooming control is required which is capable of removing the excess charge from the photosensitive area. Two general categories of blooming ccntrol structures for charge-coupled area sensors with illuminated registers will be described. Operation, design tradeoffs, and experimental data will be presented for: (a) blooming control structures which are process-compatibile with single-metal 3-phase CCI's, and (b) for blooming control structures more suitable for sealed channel, silicon gate, 2-phase CCI's. Blooming control methods will also be described for sensors having separate photodiodes with nonilluminated registers.