Ive been stressing over this photo for months, ive looked all over these forums and other, youtube, and still cannot find the action or tool that I need. Its probably one of those things so simple that I'm just looking over it.

In my port there is a photo called "Grandmothers Hat"   there is a halo around her head where the white isnt as white as the background, when I dodge to get the halo a better white there is still the area inside the mesh of the hat, short of going in and dodging every little piece of mesh, is there a better method?

Oh, and I have elements 8 though later this week I might step up to CS6 with the half off offer they have going on.

How do you dodge? I did a try here painting with white on a empty layer set to Overlay blending mode, and then also desaturated parts of the hat ( painting with white on a layer set to color ( one of thousand ways to do it ) ).

Did not see much of a hallo on my screen, although a Curves Layer showed some.

Just mask out the subject, open a curves adj. layer, and pull in the highlights until the background is pure white.

Open up a levels adjustment layer.

Find the white eyedropper on the left and use it to click in the halo.

ok, thanks guys, Ill see if I can figure out how to do these in Elements 8. Havent tried these methods before.

Went the "cheap" route. Upgraded to CS6 from Elements 8...
Masked out the subject, used refine edge to get the mesh included. Made a layer of pure white and combined them