Damien Symonds

Well, both, as far as possible. Exposure for the people and keep the background dark. Please be patient. Finish the class.

Should be quite easy. Just duplicate the Background layer, and set its blend mode to "Color". Then apply Gaussian Blur - enough to remove the pattern - about 10.0 should do it. Then add a black mask to the layer, and paint on just where needed.

Is this SOOR, or has there been some Photoshop work done also?

This is all I can offer: http://www.damiensymonds.net/2010/03/softening-hard-shadows-method-1.html But gosh, this will be REALLY hard. It would be much easier to arrange a re-shoot.

Do you still have the blanket in your possession? It might be easiest to take another photo of it.

Just one SSD is enough, I think. For your operating system. Then a regular internal hard drive as well - a terabyte or two - for file storage. I believe i5 is sufficient - i7 is not necessary. But I'm talking out of my hat here. Brian will help with more deets.

Now may I see a 100% crop of her face?

Brian will be along to help you shortly, but I just wanted to ask if you already have a screen? Or will that need to be in your budget too?

Hey, that's great! Yes, still a little yellow, but you could fix that with a little bit of desaturation with a Hue/Saturation layer, perhaps?

No, the point is that the bottom shouldn't be affected at all. That's why I need to see a screenshot. Your mask should be completely black down at the level of her feet.

Gee, it shouldn't be all blue like that at the bottom.

May I see a screenshot, including your layers panel?

Make sure you look at all the channels on the Levels layer I used.

After Levels and stuff:

While it makes the background look ok, her skin is still not perfect. After you do all your Levels work, you'd cool those warm areas with a cooling Photo Filter.

I sampled from near her knee, then clicked near her forehead.

This method should do it: http://www.damiensymonds.net/levels-eyedropper

Yeah, that part was always going to be as tedious as hell.

You might be new to the forum, but surely you're not new to the internet? An underlined word in blue almost universally indicates a link.

Did you read my article?

Oops, sorry!

@tracig24?

How did it turn out?

How did it go, @Tarria?