Help removing shadows

[diverswife]

I'm trying to finish up an invite I'm making in CS3. I've got a pic that I want to use but the shadows by the ears are bugging me to pieces! I have been trying to work on them with no luck! Can someone please help me with this?
Thanks in advance!

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...pyofMenza3.jpg

[Swampy]

You should be able to mask the shadows out using a matching solid blue layer below the masked layer. A little dodge and burn and smudging on the blue to blend your blue with the original. Perhaps add a touch of film grain to your blow layer too.

[Vejitatoja]

I feel like zooming in and working your way with stamp tool on a new layer, should work for this image. If after cloning there will be a visible diference or a line betwen the original blue and a cloned area (it might happen) just use the healing brush on that line to soften it up.

[diverswife]

zoom in on a duplicate layer or "new" layer

[Gary Richardson]

Just a quick and dirty job.

Duplicated to new layer.
Added new layer between the two copies and did a blue gradient on this layer, foreground and background colours taken from original.
Extracted boy from top copy.
Selected shadow area below chin and lightened it with levels.
Little bit of cloning to hide joins

Bit rough, but it's just to illustrate method. With a little more time and care you should be able to do a better job.

[Vejitatoja]

diverswife - By zooming in i meant to work with image enlarged/zoomed to a degree that you can clearly see what you're doing while cloning, that the line between ear and background is nicely defined and looking convincing.

[diverswife]

great! Thank you so much - I believe I got it!