2paws Designs: Shoot and Edit: Growth edit

My biggest frustrations with my photo this week were the overall darkness and the glare on the vinyl wall decal. I snapped fast in my hurry to get the shot before Dylan moved on. He really threw me as last month he posed for about 15 photos there! And, of course, yesterday on his own he stood in front of the wall and let me "measure" him (ie, I put my hand on top of his head so we can see how he measures up - so cute!).

For my edit, I started by adjusting the levels, rotating the photo slightly (I used the wall corner on the right side as my base line) and cropped the image. Then I began playing ...

Used the picker to select the navy blue color from the giraffe and created a masking layer in that color. I erased all but the glare areas. Then changed the blending mode to multiply and lowered the opacity to 74%. This kept the shadowing but eliminated the brightness.
Merged the masking and background layers.
Ran Ashley's Nice & Easy action (yes, I love that action!). I slightly adjusted all the layers (levels, brightness/contrast, hue/saturation, photo filter) and turned on the soft light fill layer.