Best Way to Brighten Only Part of a Picture?

[Squeak]

Hey, All,

I'm a (somewhat new) Photoshop CS4 user. What's the best way to brighten up just a portion of a picture? Lasso? Magic wand? I've tried both of these, but I'm not very proficient at either; I tend to grab or highlight more than I want. Also, the area that I choose to selectively brighten usually ends up looking like I've pasted something on top of the picture. I don't have a good word for this, but the selectively brighter area no longer looks "continuous" with the rest of the picture; it kind of stands out. Is there a DD tutorial for this, or perhaps one of Pattie's tutorials over at Debbie Hodge's site?

Thanks for your input.

Shirley

[Cassie Jones (1gr8muggle)]

I would likely use a Curves adjustment layer. At first, it will lighten the whole image, but focus on the problem area. When it's the way you want it, paint black on the layer mask for the adjustment layer to hide any parts of the image you don't want to be lightened.

I have a tutorial on Layer Masks here:



This tutorial uses screen shots from PS Elements, but the layer mask explanations are the same for CS4.

[Squeak]

Thank you, Cassie. Don't know how I missed this tutorial--I have several of your other tutorials. I'll get this one and give it a try.

[Chris]

Just repeating what Cassie said, but it's just that I did this to a photo a couple of minutes ago! My area was pretty specific and smaller so I loosely surrounded that area with the magic wand and went ahead and lightened it, then painted out unwanted parts, it worked perfect! Unfortunately my photo was taken about 40yrs ago (by me) and not very perfect! Cassie's tutorials are the best!!