Two Faces (Edythe and Ruth) Rescued Snapshot

My Aunt Edythe recently celebrated her 100th birthday. For the occasion, we put together a tribute book and slideshow.  I chose and edited a lot of old photos, but there wasn't enough time to use all of them.  And I now still have a pile of old photos on my desk that didn't quite make the cut.  I looked through them tonight and came across one that I have always thought had potential. It's a snapshot of four people, and I can tell that because there are four names written in the margins: Mary, Earl, Edy, and Ruth. However, due to problems with lighting (overexposure perhaps) Mary is actually completely invisible and Earl is nearly so.  But the faces of my aunt and my mother are beautiful, despite the lighting problem. So tonight I decided to do something about this.  I scanned the photo into my computer, cropped out Mary and Earl (so sorry) and used iPhoto to do some basic retouching.  Then I opened the image in Painter and used the magic wand to select areas to darker a bit. I also used some digital pastel to darken my mother's hair a bit. It's kind of a powerful image, just as it is, and I am glad I rescued it.  But I also decided to go further, and created a posterized version, which I plan to post here tomorrow.