Photo wiz please help

Can some photoshop wiz help with this photo? I have tried to clean it to a better quality but I have failed. Kindly come to my rescue. Thanks!
James

what are you trying to do with it?
what have you tried?

Oh, I was trying to clean it up and make more nice looking. I tried to reduce the darkness in the background by adjusting the level but instead it becomes whiter all over! I then tried the hue with no results. What next? I am using PS 6.

Thank you for your reply.

hi there,
i think if you scanned the photo at a higher resolution and made as many adjustments at the scanning stage; you would have a better image to work with. hope this helps.

Yes, it is true. High resolution will definitely help. I have had similar problems with such pics!!

This is what I did;
1.) First I selected the background with the magic wand tool using a low tolerance (5). I added to the selection by shift/clicking until I was satisfied that I had the black background totally selected and then I inverted the selection.
2.) Then, within the selection I made a smaller selection by using the menu select/color range to select their faces.
3.) Then I used levels and just adjusted the middle to lighten their faces.



That's it. If you had a larger photo you would want to make sure that you feather your final selection (by just a little) before you use levels.


Nineve

Just a quick note, you might need to select the childrens heads and some of the other faces to make sure you have all included.

Nineve

yea i would have tried something similar...selected only the area that needs to be lighter so that hte background woulndt turn white..i htink nineves could be actually a little too bright but honestly it is jsut a dark picture by the nature of the photography and there may not be a whole lot that one can do this kind of image

hopefully someone else can come up with something better perhaps..

good lucky and rock on!!