Digital BW, The Print

I apologize for the off-topic post -- feel free to respond offlist to spare 
others irrelevant chatter.

I at times find that I have a b+w negative that is difficult to print.   If I 
leave the scan as it comes out of the machine, parts are too dark.   If I 
adjust for the dark parts, I burn out the highlights.   A good example is a shot 
I've put on the web, "Mmmm Frappuccino!," which can be seen at 
http://www.pbase.com/image/21566869.   In this shot, I kicked up brightness and contrast to 
get the desired exposure of face and hair, but by doing so I burned out the 
right shoulder and forearm, which have good detail in the original negative.   

Surely this is a common problem.   I use PS Elements v2.0.   I know ther are 
a lot of PS wizards on this list.   If you have a good way of evening out 
images like this one in PS, I would be grateful if you could share your technique 
with me, or at least point me in the direction of some useful trove of hints 
on this subject.   

Thanks in advance to all who reply.

Sanders McNew
www.mcnew.net


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]