Because I'm going on Holiday for a few days tomorrow, I thought I wouldn't leave all off you behind bored 
Let's start this off completely backwards:
I'm going to post a step by step of what I did to this image:
It's an image of the "Pannonia Allstar Ska Orchestra"
The stage was lit fairly inconsistent, and specially in a shot like this one, including audience, you're going to run in to problems: the camera's DR is just too low.
So, I did what I usually do: Blend a few different exposures (from one Raw) in PSCS2.
People who don't want to use Keystrokes in PS, better skip the next part. Better yet, stop reading now. I only know the keystrokes for some steps.
Edit: Some keystrokes are different for CS4: Cmd+Opt+~ is Cmd+Opt+2 there. (Select composite channel). Alternatively, cmd+click the composite channel in the channels palette.
All links in the below text show a screenshot. All links and keystrokes are bold. I've tried to keep it readable...
The screenshots are pretty large, since the most show both my monitors side by side, and I wanted to keep dialogs readable. People with smaller screens will have to scroll a bit. People on dialup should probably not open all, but make do with the text
I'll try to keep this 'windows friendly', so will use 'Alt' instead of 'Opt' and 'Ctrl' instead of 'Cmd'. I hope I don't make mistakes...
1) Original shot looked like this:
Conversion thru DPP, about 0 EC. Audience is too dark, white jacket is blown.2) Copy-Pasted a lighter version (also thru DPP; about +1,3 EC) onto the original image.
Audience is about as I want it, band is overexposed (duhhh): Click
3) Hit Ctrl+Alt+~. This will give you a selection ('marching ants')
of the midtones and up(IIRC). Hit Shift+Ctrl+Alt+~ to add to this selection if you want.If you're on OSX, it's Cmd+Opt+~ obviously, but this will only work if you have disabled some of the keystrokes in the System Preferences. (I think the 'keyboard navigation' bit, but just disable what you don't need, or use occasionally, until it works. There are more things in there interfering with PS shortcuts. Alternatively, make this selection by cmd+click on the composite channel.)
4) Next, press Ctrl+Alt+D (feather). I use something around 2
5) Then, Alt click the layer mask icon. This will gave you a layer mask
, the other way around then just clicking it. (hide selection (light parts) instead of revealing them)Well. Looks like we just lost all 'punch' in the image, didn't we? Way to go....
6) The mask needs some work. I find it easy sometimes to be able to view both mask and image. To do that, go 'Window > Arrange > New window'
.Now Control click the layer mask in the newly opened image. This will show the mask as B/W.
7) Press Ctrl+L (Levels) (while the mask is highlighted). Adjust the levels of the mask to taste
. Look at the part of the image you want to alter (In this case the audience) to judge the effect. Never mind the band for now.After you're done, you can use a gaussian blurr to make the mask a bit softer (range: 2 to 5 or so); this will help bring back smaller details that other get too 'equalised'
Okay. Audience is better, band still is pale.
8) Press 'Q'. This will take you to the 'Quick Mask' mode.
Use an airbrush (black) to paint over the parts you want to keep lightened. use white to remove some quickmask if you were a bit too enthusiastic.
By default the quick mask is red, I've set mine to green.
9) Press 'Q' again. You get a selection. Click the layer mask, and fill it with black
.(shortcut: Alt+backspace or Ctrl+backspace, depending on whether your fore- or background color is black)
Much better!
Now on to the singers jacket.
10) Since older versions of DPP won't restore clipped highlights, I use ACR for that
.This file has hard clipped highlights, so can't be completely recovered, but it's still better then what DPP can do.
Edit: Newer versions of DPP do allow highlight recovery.
So, open the CR2 file,
11) Copy paste it onto the file you've been working on.
Hit Ctrl+Alt+~ (no shift this time), to select shades.
Ctrl+Alt+D again (feather)
.This time, click the layer mask icon *without pressing Ctrl*.
12) This will give you a layer mask
of the CR2 (recovered highlights in this case.)13) This mask also needs adjustments.
So, same as last time:
Go 'Window > Arrange > New window'.
Alt click the layer mask in the newly opened image.
Press Ctrl+L (Levels) (while the mask is highlighted). Adjust the levels of the mask to taste
. Use Gaussian blur on the mask as needed.No more copy-pasting of other versions of the file is going to be needed, so I can crop now.
Zoom in on the image.
14) In this case, since there was a *lot* of blown white, the highlights are too dark. So I adjust the opacity
of the top layer.15) I still feel the highlights need a bit of contrast, so I stamp visible layers (in the layers palette, or Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E), group that layer with the previous (Alt click in between the two, or press Ctrl+Alt+G if you've set that shortcut
), and use an USM of something like 20%, radius 150 or so)16) This is a bit mich, so I adjust the opacity of the top (USM) layer to taste
.Almost done.
Now for the fun part.
I want the edges a bit darker, so I airbrush a bit (white) in the layer mask of layer 2 (ACR file).
17) I then use an action I've made, duplicating the image, convert it to Lab, select the 'L' layer, copy paste it back over the edited file.
Set blending mode to 'Soft light', and opacity to taste. (30% in this case)
.In this image, I also used a layer mask on the L layer, because it was a bit much for the audience...
Done. The actual time to do this, is *way* less then the time it takes to read through all this (let alone write it
)...Obviously, you could also use the airbrush to make the masks. That would not lower the contrast though (So it would have worked fine on the audience here), and it would be quite a job in some parts of the image.
Also, you can use the quick selection before adjusting levels on the mask, to fine tune even more....
