So go ahead and use the lasso tool to make a general selection around the couple. We want to isolate them so we can work on adjusting them alone and the way we do it will mask the rest of the image out.

So make a selection all the way around.

You can help to get a better selection by using the quick mask mode which I teach extensively in my Basic Photoshop training.

Quick Mask (Q) will allow you to view a rubylith of your selected and deselected areas and use the brush tool to keep working on the selection. This gives you a lot more control and accuracy versus just using the lasso tool (like even I used to do back in the old days).

Use black as your foreground color (viewed as red) to deselect or ‘hide’ areas that you don’t want selected. White brush will show up as ‘clear’ and this is what will be selected.

Once you have got your selection in the quick mask mode (great for making and editing selections) you can go to filter: blur: gaussian blur to preview the feather or exit the quick mask mode (q again) and then choose a lasso tool and right click to choose feather to give a softer edge. This I teach throughout other tutorials.

Now that you’ve isolated the area that you want to work on by creating a selection of it, go to the Curves dialog box from the pop up menu.

When you move the cursor outside of the dialog box, a turkey baster or eyedropper will appear. Click and drag it around the image and you will see a doughnut scrubby bar appear on the Curves graph. This will show you the brightness value of that particular point. Find an area that is darker while holding the left click down and then release and Alt click to lock that particular point into the Curves graph.

Now you can find an area that is lighter that is the same brightness level that you would like that point to be, place the mouse over it and see what the Input curve # reads for that point.

Then you can select by clicking on the point) the control point you put in and enter the Output number into the entry field (the one that you remembered that you want the lightness to be of this new point).

Another way to do it is to just nudge that point up with your arrow keys on the keyboard. This will increase the brightness (either way) of that particular density/darkness point in the image and all other similar darkness ranges within the image or selection.

Now, just find a few more different points that you need to increase the brightness value on and use the same method.

The curves graph is now showing the control points and the upward arc indicates that you are lightening the pixels within that range. They are above their usual straight diagonal point. If you lower them down instead you will notice that a range will get darker (beneath the imaginary or beginning diagonal line) and use more ink density.

The flatter a line appears between two points in the curves graph, the closer to grey it will appear and the steeper the distance between two points, the more contrast or light and dark will be present. The lower left corner of the diagonal represents the darker colors as you can see from the gradient bars and you get closer to light towards the upper right. Hey, you never thought you’d start to understand Curves?!

Above the white shirts look a little too gray so I’m going to create two different control points using the method of the eyedropper and alt clicking above that point. One on one area and another on a slightly lighter area. Now there are two control points (as I call them) and you can increase the contrast between these two points by nudging the top point up. This will create brighter whites! And we’re only working on the this range or spectrum of the graph.

With curves you can carefully work on different areas of the selection or image that need a boost in contrast or need to be darker or lighter and isolate each of those ranges. 

You can get rid of control points by dragging them off to the side completely.

Since we made a selection first, the curves adjustment layer only applied to the selected area. If you need to touch it up, grab a brush right away since you are automatically on the adjustment layer mask. Use black to hide the adjustment layer effect maybe around any edges that have spilled over.

Since you've already made a selection, you can get it back by Ctrl clicking on the adjustment layer mask that is already there. Now you can do further adjustments such as balancing the color.

Since you have the selection loaded you can create a Color Balance adjustment layer as shown (if you need to). It will place this layer above whatever layer is highlighted but you can change the layer order layer if you need to.

When you have the color balance up, you can go ahead and move the sliders towards the opposite of where they are now if there is too much of an off color or tint. Don’t need to make too much of a noticeable different here. If you have a sunset as background...keep that in mind to balance the image selection to that. Remember you can work in shadows, midtones and highlights to adjust the color balance in each.

Click OK when you are done and then you can organize your adjustment layers into a layer set by clicking on the folder icon first and then dragging them in. You may to experiment around with the order of them to see what looks best.

Remember that we’ve created a selection of the newlyweds first to specifically work on them by creating one or two custom adjustment layers using curves and color balance.  Photoshop’s got great tools to help restore your images.  Here’s the before and after.

Remember you can lower the opacity of the adjustment layer set you created.

If you want to find out a lot more about restoring images and using curves effectively then read more about my Photo Restoration training here.