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[Rizard]

Hi,
This photo was taken when the lighting was particularly bad.
I have tried the burn and dodge tools to try to make the lighting as even as possible - however it is not very easy.
Does anyone have the best solution to make the top and bottom half's more equal?
Thanks.

[jgsack]

I presume you are pointing out the distinct shadow that cuts the picture in half?

A first approximation of using a layer mask on a dup layer, and setting the dup layer mode to screen works pretty well. You can start by just making the layer mask be black below and white above  the shadow border. Adjusting the opacity of the dup layer is another variable to play with.

Is something like that works, then you just need a way of avoiding a sharp boundary at the shadow border. You might try blurring the layer mask in a selection straddling the boundary .

..jim

[eBrnd]

Yep, I'd do the (nearly) same thing (I was writing it while jgsack already posted it...)

My way of fixing this would be:
- Put a white layer on top, set the Opacity to about 30% so I can see the image
- Use the pencil to draw a straight black line (hold the Shift key) right where the border of the light/shadow in the image is
- Use the bucket tool to fill everything below (where the picture is too bright) with black
- set the Layer mode to Multiply (because I wanna make stuff darker), set the Opacity to 0%
- Slowly go up with the opacity (click the little arrow, the slider is too coarse) until top and bottom look equally lit. I think 9% opacity looks okay.

You may still see a brighter or darker "line" in the image where the shadow is, I guess this is even more visible on the people because the shadow is following their shape. You can try to paint with a very big fuzzy brush in black or white on the multiply layer to fix this. A tablet might help there.
It's much easier to do this on a seperate layer and not with the dodge and burn tools, because you can just adjust the layer opacity and paint in all black, so you don't have to care about what happens when you paint over a spot multiple times...

Edit: Hmm, the door seems to be a problem. To tackle that, I'd just copy the layer, make a very fuzzy mask that just reveals the part where the door is too bright and play with brightness/saturation there (Hue +5, Brightness -82, Saturation -17 seems to look okay, but not too good). This part is tricky because the lighting is totally different.

[jgsack]

I recommend going with eBrnd's artistic judgement rather than my first suggestion. I was concentrating on the technology rather than asking the question "what does the image need to make it better?".  The bottom part is washed out so it is clearly preferable to darken it rather than lighten the top! 

There does seem to be more challenge (and many approaches) to dealing with the finishing details, such as the discontinuity and other possible artifacts introduced by the first-order fixup. Perhaps this is a general rule?

..jim