Removing shadows from face

[gax23]

Hi all,

I'm having a terrible time trying to remove the shadows from a picture. I need to remove the shadows from her face and preferably her hair and top as it'll probably look odd otherwise!

I've tried cloning and brushing, but it looks too plasticy. It's hell trying to work around the mouth too as the photo isn't of great quality. Anyone got any ideas?

The photo is here: http://s521.photobucket.com/albums/w...ent=photo1.jpg

If anyone wants the full size scan, let me know.

[amica999]

Hi Gax, welcome to RetouchPro...in order to give you some direction it would be useful to know what kind of photo editing sw you have available...

[0lBaldy]

gax23, welcome to RetouchPRO! Nice to have you aboard. Poke around, ask questions, have fun! Hope you enjoy your visits here.

The Janitor (Doug Nelson) prefers not linking to images on other servers, since those links can break and that makes the forum thread essentially useless for future readers.

~Click for Info on how to size and attach images to your posts~

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After you post your less than 100K version, you could link to a site that is hosting a larger version.(like imagevenue.com or pixentral.com or photobucket.com)

[gax23]

Originally Posted by amica999

Hi Gax, welcome to RetouchPro...in order to give you some direction it would be useful to know what kind of photo editing sw you have available...

Thanks - I'm using Adobe Photoshop 7

[0lBaldy]

Realy quick try just to give you a sample

[gax23]

Excellent! How did you do that?

[Juergen D]

I like to use a 50% gray layer set to Soft Light and paint on it with a soft white brush at about 25% opacity to lighten the shadow. There is a slight color shift occurring, which I try to correct with the Hue/Sat layer.

To brighten things a bit more I applied an Omni Lighting Effect on Layer 3, which is a merge of all below (Normal at 33% opacity).

Layer 4, another merge has a 2% Median filter applied (masked to expose the lightened area only) to reduce the noise in that area.

A little extra contrast and a warming Photo Filter are also applied.

Juergen