Need help "fixing" photo from family vacation

[brandywine9699]

Can anyone give me some suggestions on how to edit this photo? It is the best shot of our family, but is not a good quality shot. I am trying to learn Photoshop - have CS. Thanks in advance!

[OsmosisStudios]

Sorry, but youve blown out the faces on the left hand side. That cant be fixed.

[Trader]

When the highlights are blown out it is difficult to repair and can be time consuming. I did a Shadows/Highlights adjustment (50% with no contrast) then I excluded the areas that were already over exposed. Next I duplicated the layer, changed the mode to Overlay and reduced the opacity to 70%. Again excluding the over exposed areas. Finally, using the airbrush, I painted over the areas that were blown out to bring some color back into them. I sampled nearby color and set the brush to 10%. I used the eraser tool at 60% to clean up the over spray. You could do some more work airbrushing on this image but you get the general idea of what I did. Hope that helps.

[PrimeTime]

This is a though one to fix. What i did was adjust the contrast using layers.....it makes the light areas darker, and the dark areas lighter. Then i used dodge and burn with layers. Then the curves tool to make a couple small adjustments and then sharpened a little. If you shot it in RAW , you could prob. make it a little better. This is about the best i can do with my skill level in PP............




Now that i see it on screen, maybe a little less sharpness. I think i overdid it a little.

[brandywine9699]

Thank you so much to each of you! I wanted to be able to use this shot, and am still struggling through the beginner tutorials for Photoshop. I really appreciate it!