help with cleaning up 2 pictures

[zesh]

Hi, can someone help me clean up these two pics? and if not to much state the steps in which you got it done, thanks.

http://photos-d.ak.facebook.com/phot...29039_9491.jpg
http://photos-a.ak.facebook.com/phot...29020_6235.jpg

I tired using the Smart sharpen filter but it didnt come out to good

[mistermonday]

For Image 1, duplicate the background and go Image>Apply Image; Select the Background Layer, Green Channel as the source, the blend mode to Linear Dodge, and leave the opacity at 100%. Apply a Shadow/Highlight adjustment to the composite image. I raised the shadows exposing the man in the background. If that is distracting you can use less agressive settings on Shadow/Highlight or add a layer mask to mask background elements out. Finally apply a medium amount of sharpening.
Regards, Murray

[warlock]

Welcome. I'm new here too so don't really know what you mean by cleaning up. Corrction of color? noise? sharpen? In the first picture does the guy have a hat? There is so much black I can't draw out any details. Simply leveled both pictures, burned the brightness out, and airbrushed some red in the flashed out area on hte second picture. There still needs to be some more work, but here is my interpretation.

[chillin]

First I raised the black point from 1, 1, 0 to 24 & the white point to 242
next I used levels 12, 1.19, 250 but I have masked out the shirt
then I used curves again to slightly brighten the hair & skin,
High pass filter 2.0 & again only to some edges, Hue/Sat to pull back red -12,
switched to Lab mode to accent the colors, switched back to RGB & used Hue/Sat Master -15 to tone down colors (to my taste).

[0lBaldy]

If you have smart sharpen then you have a multitude of other tools like shadow highlight, opacity adjustments on the different blending modes in the layers palette and a bunch of others.. all as described above... jump in and give your picture a shot and post your results here so we can help you use the tools you have available..

Along with what some of the others above have done, I have added some straightening, cropping, cloning and healing.

Single version of Girl here and of couple here

my before and afters

[DCobb]

This was my try. I just fiddled with it until I felt there was some improvement.

dc

[Larbear]

Here's my attempt, I adjusted the exposure, clarity, and sharpness in CS3 Raw, run Neat Image on both photos, and removed some of the blemishes in the image of the girl. I also ran one of my "Image Pop" actions on both.