Please help me make my photo look normal

Hi I have quite a few pictures like this one. For some reason they are darker than normal, and the colours are less bright. - I think its to do with how the light was on the lens when I took them. I want to do something to them in Photoshop Elements to make them look normal. I have tried altering the levels slider (by pulling the far right slider to the left a bit) but it makes the clouds disappear, and although it makes the picture lighter it doesn't look right still

here is the pic - you can see my face looks dark and the colours aren't good in general - it was actually quite a bright day.

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr45/RimShot69/SNV83039bb.jpg

I appreciate any help. Thank you

Rich

Please help me make my photo look normal

Rich,

There are various ways to improve this picture. One can spend a long time on this one, but here is what I did quickly in order to get you started with the original.

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1MBjrjRMh9kwlGlueC1ECDnMDxfPH0

• Select the person (you) with magnetic lasso tool, or any other selection tool of your choice
• Create levels adjustment layer #1
• Press CTRL+right white rectangular box in levels adj. layer #1
• Select original image
• Go to Select%26gt;Inverse
• Create levels adjustment layer #2
• By double clicking the control box in each of the adjustment layers you can drag the sliders.for improvement of foreground and background

I merged the visible layers. The sky needs attention.

• I opened a new, blank file and utilized blue color C7D7EA. This is a nice light blue. I selected a patch of this, copy/pasted this over the sky in the original picture. It will be on its own layer. Alternately you can select a nice sky from another picture in order to get a source. Set blend mode to darken for this layer.
• Set foreground color to white
• Access foreground to transparent, linear gradient , drag from below up to about ther top of the tree line

I have some cloud brushes from the Adobe Studio Exchange (free), and added a few clouds.

HTH

Please help me make my photo look normal

This is a good opportunity to put the layer mask to work that comes with the Levels Adjustment layer.?Make your adjustment to the entire image until the foreground is right.?Now the sky is washed out.?Using the Magic Wand (continuous unchecked) select the sky.?Deselect (with the Selection Brush) the shirt.

With the selection active click on the mask thumbnail and do %26gt;Edit %26gt;Fill Selection with Black.?This masks the sky to show its original exposure.

Here:?http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=11hXglMiyro9p6RV5sgfzr84cnds

Juergen

Thank you very much for all the help guys. I am going to try the techniques you suggest. I was hoping for an automatic option - that adjusts the whole image at once. lol - mayb ethat was a bit too much to hope for! - it doesn't sound too hard though - I will give it a go. Thank you!