Adjusting shadowed area to match bright area

<p>Is there a way that I can get this picture so the shadowed area (the football player, mother & the lower portion of the father) to match with the bright area (upper portion of the father)? I have Photoshop 5 & Photoshop Elements. </p><div></div>

<p>a simple way of doing that might be to open it in raw mode, pump in some 'Fill Light' and then open the image in PS. Create a null Levels layer (no changes), set the blending mode to Screen, create a layer mask and invert it (so it's black), switch to brush w/ white foreground at 10% fill and brush white on the mask.</p>

<p>I had a similar problem which I dealt with in Photoshop. It was not easy as I had to select the shadowed area and adjust the levels within this area. I then softened the edges with the Clone tool.<br>

I guess with hindsight I should have used fill in flash.</p><div></div>

<p>Jeff, nice but it has that 'dropped in' look where they almost appear to be pasted in from a different image due to lack of shadowing (vs. the shadow on the white sweater and the middle woman's face).</p>

<p>The issue is dynamic range, and looks to have a lot of either shadow noise or lack of detail in the shadows which means, if you brighten up the shadows (which likely you've tried) the noise/detail turns awful. I would think the shadow detail also clipped meaning much/most of it is pure black so as you lift the shadows it remains pure black for a large area. Typically you need a lot of dynamic range to do that edit in this situation.</p>

<p>If you have the original file from the camera you can try the Shadow/Highlight menu choice in CS5. You can see a tutorial here <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn2MrRpVrWg">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn2MrRpVrWg</a></p>

<p>Or you can attempt to adjust the levels. Create a new levels adjustment layer, and move the middle triangle to the left (it may be the right). That will brighten up the mids darks.</p>

<p>Third is to try with curves. Create a new curves layer, and what you want to do is click in the middle of the line and drag it left. Or you can click 1/3rd up the line and drag it up. A little goes a long way here.</p>

<p>If this is a scan of a print, there's not much you can do unless you have the negative. If you do have the negative, you need to scan it in twice. One at 0 and another at +2. The 0 will bring it in like this, the +2 will bring it in very bright bringing out the details in the shadows. You then need to merge the two so you get both detail in the hightlight(s) and shadows. An HDR program may help with this. If you have a RAW image, this is recoverable however I think because you're asking you don't have the RAW.</p>

<p>Quick and dirty fix... scanned photo so not a lot to work with, basically a curves layer and a saturation layer combined with some careful layer masking (this was not careful layer masking, just wanted to give an idea of what can be done).</p><div></div>