How to restore burned highlights?

To a Photoshop pro:

Note: First time posting and I posted to the wrong forum

(Alternative Process) So here it is in the correct forum.

Can anyone guide me as to how to possibly fix this picture. I realize

now that the highlights are completely blown thanks to Richard in

(Alt Process)

If you knew my dog you would know that this really captures his

personality. I did bracket the next set of shots but the expression

was long gone. Anyway, I am new to this digital thang as well as

Photoshop. I have tried using levels, brightness/contrast, gradients

basically everything that "I" know how to do. If anyone has any

suggestions I would truly appreciate it.

Thanks<div></div>

Go back to the original image open it in Photoshop� , and

choosethe "Histogram' tool" in the image menu. What does the

histogram look like?<P>

Did you shoot digitally or did you scan from film?<P>

Levels , brightness/contrast and the other tools you are using

are relatively crude. Everytime you make an adjustment with

these tools you throw out information. Betterto use "Curves."

The detail really is not there, so instead of trying to recover it, you need to give your dog a digital hair transplant. As usual with Photoshop, there are many ways:

<p>

<ul>

<li>Using the "Healing brush" (requires Photoshop 7). Set the mode to Luminosity (because it's in B&W, and you want fix the luminosity). Find a patch of hair that's even in luminosity. Use it as your source and brush the blown out parts to "restore" detail.

<li>Using the "Patch tool" (requires Photoshop 7). Like the "Healing brush" the "Patch tool" matches the texture, lighting, and shading of the sampled pixels to the source pixels. It is even easier to use, at the cost of giving you no control. Select the source (a part with some detail) using a lasso, and drag it to the blown out part.

<li>Using the "Clone stamp": somewhat similar to the healing brush, but works in older versions. The healing brush is rather more clever; it tries to make things seamless, whereas the clone brush blindly copies from source to destination. The saving grace is that unlike the "Healing brush", you can adjust the opacity so you have one more degree of control.

</ul>

<p>

Here's a five minute jobbie. The face does not looks convincing because I don't know your dog.<div></div>

Thanks Emre, unfortunately I only have PS 6.01 but I will try my best with the rubber stamp.

Thank you.