I was wondering if there is a way to lower the brightness of the neon sign in this photo so it looks less over powering with out lossing detail in the rest of the photo.I tried selective color I belive is what it is called and gama but those changed other parts of the photo I wished to not change..

you can magic wand it if you can set the threshold high enough to select it all or you can erase it all but that drag it into another new image close old image out load up the same image again put the neon sign back in overlayering the overpowering one and adjust its brightness how u see fit? just a idea I am a noob at this.

There isn't a whole lot you can do to lower the brightness of the sign without it looking grey and phony; the image in that area is blown out an there is no way to regain detail that doesn't exist. My approach would be to use levels to open up the rest of the photo, making the contrast less jarring. Now, if you have the original negative or transparency, that's another story...

select the colour from between the neon lights. then make a new layer and paint over the neon lights using this colour. then play with either overlay mode or screen or whatever until it looks right and to what you want or you could just reduce the opacity of this new layer....but I think overlay would be better...

If you convert to Lab mode temporarily you can mess with the lightness and not affect the colors. Then you can play with Curves and darken just the lightness values of the neon sign with a curve like the attachment shows which may get you closer to what you want.

I do coulour correction by the numbers in the info pallete adn use the multiple referance point eye dropper tool to find the right level I can definly say with this method you will not only see the cast in the picture but also when adjusting curves and levels having the info pallet in view as you change the gamut of the image. detail in the shadow end is not notice able enogh to draw the eye away from this large higlight you may want to increase the level of the mid-tones to make this highlight less obvious. when I get home I can actually do it .. so wait and see... I hope you are pleased with the result... I will be using a mac to do it.. but if you have a good monitor on your PC and a good callibration techinques .. hopefully what I do to the image is satisfactory... I will not use auto curves and use a large History brush @ 50% it's far to easy.... LOL but I will show the result : D BRB