Tips on touching up this selfie of my wife and me

[Tim Carr]

I've got PaintShop Pro X7, but am a complete newbie. I've thrashed around trying to improve the attached photo, which is the very first "selfie" of my wife and myself. I want to reduce the glare in the background, and lighten up our faces (especially my wife's). All I do is make a mess. I would be grately deepful if you could give me specific instructions, or direct me to a specific video, that would answer my questions. (And if you could actually some retouching to show me what to aim for, that would be fabulous!).

[pdxrjt]

I'm sure there are better minds than mine that can help you. A couple of things, when highlights are "blown," as in overexposed, you can't get them back. I think a goodly part of the glare on the right of the image is blown. In any event, using the dodge and burn brush will lighten or image. The opacity scale will help you set how much you will darken or lighten with your brush and checking "smart edge" will help limit what part of the image is effected by your brush strokes. There are many books written about enhancing facial features but from the standpoint of your question, the dodge and burn brushes are a great way to start.

[Jean-Luc]

For the dark areas (faces), you may try :
-> Adjust
-> Brightness and contrast
-> Fill light/ Clarity
Play with Fill light

For the overexposed areas, try :
-> Adjust
-> Brightness and contrast
-> Hightlight/Midtone/shadow
Play with HighLight cursor

Hope this will help...

[Joelle]

Backlighting to remove a little of the over exposure, but there isn't a lot you can do about that.
Whites areas don't contain any pixel information, so you can't replace what's not there.

A Fill Light to lift the darker areas.

I hope you have a larger version to work on

Joëlle