Lighten and darkening specific areas correctly

[Dragoneer]

I need to know the best way to lighten part of a picture without it being two-toned. An example of this is when I took a picture of someone inside a house.

The orange dress is vivid, and the white wall and door came out good also. The problem is that the lighting wasn't good enough to bring out the true skin tone of the person. So much so that the person's face could hardly be seen, and her neck and hands came out the same as her face also.

I tried to lighten her face by using the Ellipse in Tools>Adjustment>Brightness/Contrast making sure not to go outside the perimeter of the face. I then zoomed to 1600X and manually changed the rest of it a few pixels at a time by switching to the Rectangle in Tools . The result after more than an hour later was something that looked akin to pasting an egg in place of her face on the picture. It was grainy and looked ridiculous.

I don't want to lighten the whole picture because it ruins the true color of the dress, and not as important, the door and walls don't look as sharp and vivid either.

There must be a better way! At least I hope so.

P.S. I would also like to know how to do the reverse; darken a specific area without the two-toned look.

[BoltBait]

With this plugin: http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?showtopic=5578

[Dragoneer]

I downloaded the plugin & tried to install it. I unzipped the file & nothing happened. All it showed was a dll file with 2 cogs. I checked in Adjustments & didn't see anything that would allow me to use the new plug-in.

Am I supposed to extract the file in a particular file/location?

[brandon.roeder]

program files-paint.net-effects. drang the dll's there and they will appear in the effects menu

[Dragoneer]

Thanks, I see it now!

[adgorn]

With this plugin: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=6524

Is there a new location for this plugin? I would like to try it as well. Thanks.

[BoltBait]

Here it is: http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?showtopic=5578