Specific Brighten and bring this photo for life!

[Pixelprincess]

Hello everyone! After hours of messing with this photo I cannot get it to look right.
Can anyone brighten, un blur, and make this photo better quality! Please share what you do so I can share with the next person!

 

[Pixelprincess]

original photo without sky change if that helps!

 

[Rich54]

Here's my try. That hazy, washed-out feeling in the original photo is usually due to low contrast, so most of what I did was contrast adjustments.

• I reset the black point and the white point.
• I did a Levels adjustment on the person only, greatly increasing the contrast of the face and upper body, but fading-out that adjustment from the waist down.
• I did a second Levels adjustment on the background only, increasing its contrast, but with different settings from the person.
• I did a small amount of sharpening with a High Pass filter, set to Hard Light.

I would advise against the blue sky you attempted in your PSD file. It's a very cloudy day with very diffuse shadows on you and the garden area. If the sky were bright blue there would be very different lighting on the rest of the photo. In my opinion a blue sky wouldn't look natural.

 

[Argos]

Made a try aswell, like Rich already did the natural approach I tried a little bit aggressive one.

 

[Rich54]

Attaching my PSD file to see the various settings.