Seriously need help with this photo

[kendon11]

Hope I can figure out how to attach!!!
Anyway, only one of the faces in this photo is overexposed, that and the wedding gown. The rest of the photo looks fairly good to me. How can I correct just one section?

[DCobb]

This advice comes from a hobbyist, not a professional. I use photoshop CS3. I put a new layer filled with 50% gray, with blend mode for that new layer set to soft light and painted with black using a soft brush set to between 10 and 15% opacity. This is non destructive and you can go over just those areas that you want to darken ( or paint with white to lighten. I also made an attempt to sharpen the picture.

dc

In looking at this a second time I think a levels or curves adjustment is needed to lighten the white of the dress without making it look once again over exposed.

[adarkartist]

I am not sure how much of the dress can be saved. I think i was able to get a little bit more to come through. But odds are, or hopefully when you scanned the image you have a higher rez file. all i did was play with the levels and curves ( I made mine a bit stronger then what you would want to see, and then i used a layer mask on the curves and sat and used the brush for a few min till i got what I wanted.) with the one given there was too much pixilation to try to many things. After i got a little more depth to come out in the face i simply messed with the colors to make it look a bit better. Or you could try to create a d&b layer and try that way out, i probably would have done that but only had a few min and not able to sit and do that with laptops touchpad.

oh and I believe i might have tried to up the rez on the picture when i first started and forgot to undo so might be larger then the one u posted

[mistermonday]

This image is way overcompressed and pixelated to do much work with. Hopefully you have a high resolution scan to work from.
There are many approaches you can use like ones mentioned. Another is to duplicate the background layer and change its Blend Mode to Multiply. Add a black layer mask (Hide All) and just paint over the face or any other areas that need darkening with a soft white brush. You can also fiddle withthe opacity of that layer to fine tune it. The brides skin tone is too magenta so a Hue/Sat or selective color adjustment layer can fix that.
Regards, Murray

[0lBaldy]

I took the easy way out for this one!
History brush set at multiply, 100%
Kept button pressed while painting the woman and dress and floor facing she is sitting on (if you go over it more than once and it gets too dark... after releasing the button go immediately to edit>fade to fade the correction)..

you might also clone out those distracting things at the bottom of the picture

Tis a nice picture.. Hope your version is a higher resolution and a lot more clear than this one..

[Hatsa]

Hi!

White dress pixelates easily, so its hard.

Hatsa

[pixeltek]

all i did was tweak the color, multiply layer/mask her dress, sharpen/high pass, remove some distractions (not all), and this is what i got...

[kendon11]

Thanks to you all for your help. I am not really familiar with using adjustment layers to correct. Can anyone point me in the direction of a good tutorial on this? I mostly use paint shop since I am not as familiar with photoshop.
Thank you all so much!!