Damien Symonds

Sorry, cloning it has to be. Pour yourself a stiff drink, put on some music, and settle in for a good long time. Don't rush it.

Well, I can't explain it any better than that.

You've read this, haven't you?

Download the PSD

I'll upload my PSD, stand by ...

High-end inkjet printers do approach Adobe RGB, yes. But yes, sRGB is still the only space to use.

I wonder if it would be sufficient to just use Levels to shift it from black to dark/shadowed skin colour?

Then take better damn photos.

What fun stuff? It's already golden, we established that.

Then, the remaining cloning should be fairly simple.

Yep, I don't see how you could do much more. Good job.

Hmmm ... I don't think you used D&S effectively enough. I think I would have used roughly 15/6.

I don't have any "tricks" for you, sorry. Just careful cloning.

First of all, try these: http://www.damiensymonds.net/2015/09/black-boxes-and-other-weird-behaviour.html

Did you mean to also include a closeup of the fix?

Well, keep going. There's still more shadow on her face than your example images.

No, sorry

Hey, good progress!

Glad we got that sorted out. Now, back to these glasses ... I used a Levels layer, and moved the white slider on each channel thusly: Red 170 Green 150 Blue 135 Then masked it as needed - first at 100%, then massaged it at 10%.

Yes, DNG is a slightly compressed format. I don't know how they do it, but don't worry, no quality is lost.

Yep, good stuff! For the areas of her face which are too bright, maybe this might work?

Pour a stiff drink, put some music on, and start very gently dodging and burning her face to make it look front-lit.

Amazing what correct white balance does :\

Well, it would still require a fair bit of D&B to make it look akin to the example ones, but yes, it should be feasible. And it's lovely and golden already, yes?

The example photos you linked ... I assume they had some fill flash used. You'd need to ask about it in a photography group though - I can't advise you on that.