Can this be fixed?

[amorton1437]

So I took some pictures of my son wearing his daddy's beret and I used my usual black sheet as a background, I have a white one I use, but it always makes his skin look weird because he is so pale... But now the beret doesnt show up because it is black :mad2: And he is not into getting his pictures taken... Any way to salvage this? Make the beret not blend in as much? Feel free to copy and try to edit if you want, I couldnt think of anything.

[Frog]

In ps elements 6, under adjust lighting, I lightened shadows, darkened highlights and played with mid-tone contrast.

This was a real quickie so it can be done better.

[Frog]

except it is darker here than I adjusted it. Oh well, that is one day to do it or maybe play with levels.

[Frog]

try again not sure why it is darker here

[Frog]

any way, yes, it can be saved. Both of these were real quickies so much better is possible, especially with your full sized image.
Did you shoot in raw format?

[amorton1437]

No I didn't shoot in raw. I tried once but I am new to this whole photography thing and am not sure how it all works with RAW format and my computer wouldn't load them for some reason?

Anyways here is the original, before any editing was done. It stands out a bit more I just realized but I like the darkness of the background in the edited one better.

[Anbesol]

Cool shot, good eyes.

The best way to eliminate this is actually to light up between the hat and the backdrop.

In here, you can isolate the black hat with careful wand use, right click and use 'layer via copy', then adjust the brightness of that layer to offset the black of the hat. Be sure to only layer copy the black fabric of the hat, and not the blue symbol, and soft edge erase the inside of the hat for a more natural looking black. I did that and came up with this:

[daq7]

Do not try to fix the beret. It is totally implied and the darkness helps. Crop out everything but the face.

[daq7]

Blend in Frogs exposure of the beret with your exposure of the face and lose the rest of the picture.

[jetrim]

This is actually a really easy fix. Duplicate the layer and change the blend mode to "screen" then you can either stop, or erase the screen layer away except for the beret
here's two examples showing just the hat and the whole photo brightened using "screen"