Oh that sun is shining too bright there

Might have been a great pic with the sunset in the background and some gold on the faces but that sun is just way to bright. I've tried several tricks but I am so unexperienced that every time when i'm trying to adjust it the whole image gets affected and looks screwed up. When the area is selected it becomes too visible that it was edited. Any ideas how i can make that sun to shine softer and not to distract attention from the faces?
Thanks.

You might actually go the opposite direction, leave the background alone and work on bringing up the people. I duped the layer and set it to screen mode then masked out the people and lowered the opacity as you can see.

hi,
that sun it just dominates plus it blown out...
the things i tried...
1. select the people and do just a very slight curve adjustment to brighten them up just alittle.... that will leave the background uneffected
note... may want to look at including the rails in your adjustment.. but that sort of a judge ment call... may not want to since brithen that up ma distract from the people..
2. to tone down the sun... I sample with the dropper a 5x5 sample of a yellow near the sun.... then i used my brush and set a low opacity... to fill in the blow sun and the bottom sun beam that appered also be blown out... may or may not want to use the burn tool a little but if do ... again at a very low exposure value you want to make the changes very subtle .....

do things in small increments

well those are my thoughts from a guy whose a novie

ilya42 said:

Might have been a great pic with the sunset in the background and some gold on the faces but that sun is just way to bright. I've tried several tricks but I am so unexperienced that every time when i'm trying to adjust it the whole image gets affected and looks screwed up. When the area is selected it becomes too visible that it was edited. Any ideas how i can make that sun to shine softer and not to distract attention from the faces?
Thanks.

Ok, thanks everybody!

hi,
your welcome, good luck on what ever meathod you use...

just a thought...that railing... to me is also very distracting... just an idea since it not important to the image... is eliminate the railing...

ilya42 said:

Ok, thanks everybody!