Help with lightening photo

[Pirate's Princess]

Last trip to Disney, DBF and I were picked as extras for Indy, and the wardrobe woman took a picture of us but it came out so dark! I have picasa and photoshop, and don't really know how to use either.

Can anyone help????

Thank you!

 

[DueyDooDah]

Unfortunately, you have a very large range between darks and highlights. The sky is so bright that it affected the camera's ability to capture the subject properly.

You'll need a program that can adjust the white balance and selectively edit the shadows and highlights. Photoshop will definately do this, I'm not sure about Picassa.

You can get a much better picture just by adjusting the white balance. Once that's done, then you need to do something about the sky. You could use layers and "brush" the sky darker. It will take some work. I played with it in Lightroom for a second and came up with this. It needs alot of work, but that is not possible with the copied image I have.

 

[Pirate's Princess]

Wow, thank you so much! It already looks so much better. I'll play around with it in photoshop. My brother gave me a new computer and it came with it, so I've never used it before.

 

[Candlepin_Man]

If you have any Photoshop program, it takes a little bit of time, but use the magic want tool or a selector tool and choose to lighten the selected area. It can be a little time consuming but absolutely worth it.