It needs some work. I took it yesterday but as you can see it came out dark and not very good.

Any help and steps to get this image looking half decent would be appreciated.

thanks.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12301341@N02/1275205802/

I firstly did a levels adjustment on the photo and then on a blank layer used a black to white gradient down the page with the black at the base moving to white at the top. I then set the blending mode to overlay which helped bring out the faces in the second row and backdrop. I then reduced the opacity of the gradient until I thought the blend looked best. Not sure if offence would be taken if you cleaned the carpet.

I duplicated the background layer, set that to Screen. Used a gradient mask to lighten up the upper part only. Lowered the opacity of the Screen layer to about 75%.
Upped the contrast some and used Hue/Sat to increase the overall saturation.

Juergen

This is my try. I did remove the artifacts from the floor. I hope they were not significant and should have been left in.

dc

duplicate layer and upped the exposure to lighten the background drapes, then masked out the parts of the family that were too blown-out.

duplicated original background layer and added a High Pass to 'ping' the contrast a little and just overlayed the layer on top.

unsure about how much you wanted to achieve in terms of cleaning the floor etc.

Unfortunately Neillo, us old folk can't see too much difference at such a small scale, maybe some highlights and saturation

Yeah me too, wasn't until I looked at my upped post that I thought "hell, that's small", but then again the original was a small file too.

Disregard my post, it's pants!

But I take your point though - it's hard to know how far to go or not to go when you're unsure about what kind of end-result your client is expecting.

N :)