Photoshop Help--Need to brighten picture to see criminal

My husband's friend has a camera that takes pictures when a motion detector is set off. A vandal damaged some property and the camera actually caught a close up photo of him.

The criminal thought he was slick and removed the memory card, but surprisingly left the camera alone. However, because the memory card was full, the camera got the photo of him on the internal memory instead of the card.

The photo is very close up and gets the bottom 2/3 of his face (shown below). The problem is that it's extremely dark. The corn field in the background is well lit. I have messed with the brightness and contrast, as well as other things, and haven't had any luck.

Can anyone offer any suggestions? Thanks!

 

This is the best. The face becomes obscured too much when you start playing with the filters. Really need the original picture.

 

It is a bit frustrating. That's about how far I got on the original, which I can't add because it's over the Major Geeks upload limit. The face area is so black that it's hard to pick up anything.

I messed with the Brightness/Contrast and Curves. I also tried to overlay a lighter layer, but I'm probably not doing things totally right. If you have any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks for your time.

 

Agree, the original picture is highly required for this.

Nice tutorial to brighten in photoshop:

http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/cb/shadows.html

another:

http://www.picturecorrect.com/photoshoptips/phototouchups.htm

 

Problem is, I am using PS Elements, and Shadows is not in there for mine.

 

I'm using Photoshop 7 and don't think I can get that either. I think it might only be in Photoshop CS.

I've been messing with the instructions given via the second link in theefools' post, but I'm not making much progress. It's so black in front of the face and I can't get past that.

 

Your local police dept, could make this guy nice enough for the cover of Time magazine.

 

How large is the file?

If you enable private message, I'll send you my gmail account, so that I could perhaps check it out.

 

I thought about that, but now it's driving me crazy and I just HAVE to do it. I'm psycho.

 

I'll do that! Thanks!
The picture my husband was given is only 369 kb. I believe it's the unaltered original, but am not sure.

 

The larger the file, the easier it is to edit it. Since the larger file size holds much more data, within the image.

If it is a small picture, at 370kb (round up ) there may be no point, but don't give up.

When I go to work, I'll check it out.

I'd rather work with 1 MB to 100 MB pics.