Open the original image with Photoshop (CS3 is used here, other versions are similar). Let’s first look at the overall photo. Most of our daily life photos are taken from low-end digital cameras, and the black and white fields cannot be positioned well, so the photos are often as gray as this one.

Original picture

First duplicate a layer of the background (always a good habit), go to: Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen USM, the value depends on the size of the photo.

sharpen

Create a level adjustment layer. The value has no reference value and is determined based on the screen. The right is the number of highlights, the left is the number of dark tones, and the middle is the mid-tone. Sometimes exaggerated PS techniques can make the adjustment very weird, depending on the needs of expression. Here we just want to use this color level to increase the brightness of the face. Pull the rightmost adjustment bar until the highlight begins to overflow (overbright) on the face. Leave the left and middle ones untouched, and then press OK.

Levels adjustment