In the original pic, a streak of light falls across the subject's face while the background is quite dark.

To correct this, I first got rid of the light streak with the cloning brush. Then I selected the subject, including the menu and the entire bottom part of the photo, and separately corrected color and contrast on the two parts of the photo.

The job was labor intensive because the cloning out the light streak and selecting the subject took a long time, but the rest was push-button. On a separate effort, I was able to get a lot more color out of the background, but ultimately decided to leave the background brighter but less colorful. I thought it make a nicer contrast with the subject.

What would have been your general approach? Any shortcuts to the labor-intensive parts (cloning and selecting)? For what it's worth, I'm using PSP8, not PhotoShop.

On first look it comes off a little unnatural lighting-wise (too bright) considering the overall scene), but otherwise a vast, vast improvement over the original. No hint of the light streak. Skin and hair colors look natural as does the skin fold and light reflection on her cheek. Nice work on the eyes, too. In a nutshell, well done.

If PSP supports "cloning by blend mode," i.e., when clone tool is active having the option to chose (say) darken or lighten, and cloning onto a separate layer (vs. directly on clone source layer), these come in handy for me.

Good suggestion. PSP's tools do let you select the blending type. I'll experiment with those, cuz I always just leave them set to "normal."