Damien Symonds

No, when you turn it ON.

In my PSD file, turn off the Color Fill layer and leave it off for now. Turn the Levels layer on and off. Do you see what it is doing?

Don't worry about that layer yet! Just get the Levels layer sorted out, so that the wall touching the tip of his hair is the same colour as the wall touching the rest of the hair. That's all that matters.

The gradient layer is for the wall!!!! After you've balanced the colour around the hair. As I told you, the gradient layer will go instead of the Color Fill layer that I used.

For heaven's sake, look at my PSD file. Do you see where I've painted black on the top of the layer? Of course not.

That's because you're painting white on white, ya wally!

Ok, that's weird. May I see the screenshot of your whole Bridge screen?

1-5 are correct. After step 5, the photo should be very very bright. 6 is correct. 7 is NOT. There is no involvement for the gradient tool for this photo. Brush tool only.

Hi Cindy, here's the PSD. I've used simple Solid Color layer where you will use a Gradient layer instead, but importantly, I want you to see the Levels layer.

Can you still open them ok?

Free is fine.

Great! So that confirms it isn't your computer. Have you calibrated this one?

Hi Lloyd, please don't do any editing until you've finished the class. This is all explained.

Well, it makes everything the same colour. Are you satisfied with it?

So far so good. The question is, should we remove the texture from the parts of the blanket where it's visible? I mean, do you feel it's too obvious that there are some textured parts and some not?

Well, is the temporary monitor ok?

"Pow" doesn't happen in raw. Just do your clean processing exactly as normal.

Ok, can you open one of the photos that shows banding, and go to Edit>Assign Profile, and assign the monitor profile to the image, and tell me if that makes it better, or worse, or the same.

Use the eyedropper, like this, to match the dark section to the light section - roughly match, at least. Then it's the normal matter of using a gradient layer to replace the whole background.

No, it has nothing to do with File>Place or Smart Objects. May I see a closeup of that area?

Replacing the background is the only safe solution. May I see your "fake looking" attempt?

Oh gee, 4GB is only half of the minimum RAM that Adobe recommends for running CC. Definitely start by running this.

Have you found another photo with a suitable bit of toe for swapping? In what way is this one different? May I see one of the other photos on which you did it successfully?

I still think I see it, a tiny bit.

I agree with Sam. And I'd say once you fix the colour, you might not even need much dodging.