Need some simple suggestions for 2-toned image

[Braddock]

Its been a while since Ive logged on here. Been busy with work and all. Anyhoo, I have a photo I need to restore and Im not sure the best way to attack the problem. What would yall suggest? Thanx

[Oh_Heck]

Boy I'm sweatin just lookin at that image. Thats a challenging one. I'm interested to see what feedback you get on this.

[albatrosss]

Gave it a shot.

Using levels I darkened the blown out side. Then masked and painted. Then played around with curves and dodge and burn to get some contrast.

[HroadhogD1]

I selected the light area, used a curves adjustment on the light area with a 5 pixel feather. Then I masked the area between the two halfs

[Braddock]

Thanx yall. Ive messed around with levels and gotten a decent looking image, But I still havent learned fully how to get the most out of curves. I usually end up making the image worse.

[chillin]

I tried to keep the background dark.
A lot of selective level adjustments with masking.
Neat Image & high pass filter.

[Alison]

I dupicated the layer, set the opacity to multiply and brought the percent down to ...... I think it was about 50% Used a layer mask and the gradient set to black to transparent .... duplicated that layer about 3 times. In hindsight it could have had a few more, but .....

I basically fiddled around with levels and curves after that. I didn't do any repairs on the top left corner, so that could be made much more appealing. I did nothing with the mother and daughter either, so there are still lots of possibilities left to improve this more. I did crop the image to take away the majority of glare that was still in the top, left hand corner.

[Kraellin]

Flora was an expert at these. if i find her posts on this type of image, i'll link it here. you might also do a search on her posts. you might only find color ones, but the technique would be similar.