It was early spring in Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, California. Saratoga is near San Jose, and the Japanese-style gardens cover 18 acres of foothills. I used a pocket camera to take an image (actually a two-image vertical panorama spliced in Photoshop™) of the Pond and Hill Garden:

It might be nicer if there were more flowers and foliage, but it does convey a “Spring is coming” look. There are some technical problems to be fixed using Photoshop. The first step is to lighten the shadows, using the Enhance> Adjust Lighting> Shadows/Highlights. I set the lighten shadows slider to 15%.

The scene is still contrasty, so the next step is to darken the highlights by about 25%:

I boosted the midtone contrast at the same tine as darkening the highlights. That’s often required when both darkening highlights and lightening shadows. The goal is to work on the low and high ends of the contrast curve while preserving the middle. All three adjustments could have been with the sliders at one time, but I wanted to show the different effects.

The final adjustment is to darken the foreground a little more. That’s done by selecting the whole foreground with a box, using select> feather to blend the edges, then using Enhance> Adjust Lighting> Brightness/Contrast.

For the final tweak I increase the saturation a little. That makes the colors brighter. I might have overdone the saturation a bit. You be the judge.

The most important of the adjustments was lightening the shadows. That’s the the one to remember. The Photoshop tool for that does a good job.