Finally moving off the basic questions here and have a bit more involved one. :-)

I have an edit that I'm doing right now where one of my shots has material in the background that I don't want to see. It is a shot of a pianist sitting at a grand piano and the shot is through the end of the lid. It is a pretty cool shot- especially because he isn't using traditional music- he's playing from an iPad with a dragon on the case. Anyways, what we didn't realize when we set up the shot (it was taken from a POV camera on a stand. Static shot) is that one of the camera operators was set up directly behind the pianist in the hall. We have this great shot of the player and the hall's lights weren't dark enough to hide what was out there.

I've tried working with shadows and highlights and such, but that isn't working so well. The piano is black (obviously) and therefore while I can get rid of the camera op behind the performer by working with my shadows, it is also messing with the color of the piano and a the pianist's outfit (which was also black).

How do I go about adjusting only a portion of an image that is otherwise usable? Here's a still of what I'm talking about.

Thanks!

--Ben

How do I go about adjusting only a portion of an image that is otherwise fine?

When you are talking about a portion of the image, you are talking about a secondary color grade. Typically with a mask, so that your correction only applies to a portion of the image. There are lots of ways to do this depending on your image and the tools you have available.

A couple of good tutorials for AE's free plugin Color Finesse:

Primary Color Correction in After Effects : Adobe After Effects Tutorial (http://library.creativecow.net/devis_andrew/Primary-Color-Correction/1)
Secondary Color Correction in After Effects : Adobe After Effects Tutorial (http://library.creativecow.net/devis_andrew/Secondary-Color-Correction_AE/1)

might get you started.

Of course, the three way color correction effect in PPro also handles secondary color grades. I'm not sure about masking. You'll have to investigate.

This is what your "garbage matte" was designed for. Matte the area, apply maybe some blur to the matte area. Read about it here: Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 & CS5.5 * Eight-Point, Four-Point, and Sixteen-Point Garbage Matte effects (http://help.adobe.com/en_US/premierepro/cs/using/WS43FF61E8-FF2C-4ec7-8A10-CEBD210A36F9a.html)

and here, if things move around: http://www.video2brain.com/en/lessons/animating-garbage-mattes

You can use the matte to blend a blurred, and/or darkened copy of the clip to overlay the part you want to remove. You may need to use the track matte effect to do this: Premiere Pro CS5 TrackMatte.mp4 - YouTube