Can someone please tell me how to get rid of this shadow? I have several (about 50) more shots that I need to do so a how to guide would be great... Thank You..

http://img93.exs.cx/img93/9914/sha7ai.jpg

Ps I did buy a flash bracket

Very quick and dirty with no tweaking, which you can obviously do with other layers. I pity you with 50 of those. Been there, done that, no fun!

Janet

Ooops, sorry I didn't welcome you at first. Now I will be official and do the welcome thing. Howdy. Nice to see ya. Come back often. :)

Hi, I am unsure as to what you have done... I see you made a background copy and did the gradient fill and then curves on what?

I tried just that and my image did not change at all, did I miss something?

Thank you for the welcome also..

Hi Kimberly, I presume that the shadow you wished removed was that of the groom. I'm afraid I have no really simple way to remove it, if you have 50 or so of these, it's going to take a fair bit of work.

What I did was as follows.

Roughly selected shadow area, then copied and pasted to a new layer.
Ran a levels adjustment to lighten this. This involved adjusting individual channels as there was a slight colour shift problem.
Erased round edges of selection to get better fit.
Created new layer set to Soft Light and filled with 50% grey, then using soft white/black brush set to 5%, painted in dark and light to even out shade.
Finally, cloned out any remaining anomolies.

I tried how you mentioned, It didnt come out anywhere as close to how yours did. I think you lost me at creat new layer and fill with 50% Grey... Is this new layer a copy of the shadow laer or an empty layer? Where do I get the 50%grey? I have seen it somewhere but I cant remember where.

Thank you for your help..

Hi Kimberly,

Click on the arrow on the tab of your layer palette, then New Layer,
then the settings you need are on the palette that pops up.

Because you're in soft light mode, 50% grey is neutral point, by painting on it with black or white, you darken or lighten the grey, therefore darkening or lightening the image. It gives a more subtler effect than dodging and burning.
I usually work with a brush opacity of 5-10% and slowly build up areas as required. Its a bit time consuming, so try to get things as close as you can with levels and curves.

Also, if you have trouble in correcting the colour shift totally, try creating a new empty layer set to colour blend, then sample colour from good areas and paint into bad areas. Adjust layer opacity for fine control.

Hope this helps.