Ok I'm almost to a point where I'm happy with this photo, but it has two sections that have almost spotlights of light down.

I can go through and hand redo the sections if necessary but I thought I would check if anyone had any good tricks :)

This is a link to the whole pic

Whole car (http://www.radicalpixel.com/display/car4.jpg)

And this is a slice of the issue with the arrows pointing to what I'm talking about.

Slice of picture (http://www.radicalpixel.com/display/car4_piece.jpg)

- Noel

Looks like a job for a levels or curves adjustment layer with a gradient on the layer mask. At least I'd start with a gradient and then hand-paint the rest of the mask. You might also get by with a black fill layer set to multiply and then lower the opacity until it matches (but you'll still need that layer mask).

For strictly hand painting, make a new layer, fill with 50% gray, set blend mode to overlay. Take a soft brush with a very low opacity (like 5%) and paint black to darken, or white if you darken too much.

I'm new and trying to learn. Why not use the art history brush after adjusting brightness and contrast so the lighted areas match the rest of the photo? Am I making things too compicated?

The history brush is certainly one way to go, but if you're not dead-on perfect in your adjustment there will be no way to fine-tune it. As for using the ART history brush, I guess I'd need to see a walkthrough since I have no idea what filter could be locally applied to make that adjustment.

If you overdo the brightness/contrast adjustment on purpose, then use the art history brush, you can set your brush at 30-40% and do that fine-tune thing you mentioned. That's how I did the above copy.