Remove shadow

[leejayd]

I've been trying to remove the shadow from this photo with little success.

Is it possible? The low contrast is causing the problem I think.

I'd appreciate any help with this.

Thanks,

Lee

[mistermonday]

Lee, welcome to RetouchPro. A single Dodge layer will get rid of the shadow with about 5 mins worth of work. Add on top of the dodge layer a blank layer set to color will allow you to paint over the dodged areas to correct for any color shifting. Partial sample attached
Regards, Murray

[leejayd]

Okay. I duplicated the base layer. And then painted this layer with the Dodge.

I get horrid results - I tried changing the brush so it was soft and this made things a bit better but still not good. I think this is because I'm painting over an area that has different shadow intensities.

I'm a little stuck with the colour layer you suggested. I wonder if this will correct things.

I added a colour adjustment layer but I'm not sure how to use this to correct the dodge colour effect.

I appreciate your help on this.

Lee

[mistermonday]

Lee, the Dodge and Burn tools are some of the least effective ways to perform D&B. There are a number of other methods that afford you much more precision and flexibility. My preferred method is to add a Curve adjustment layer above the background. Raise the center point to make the image very bright. Then hot Ctrl+I to invert the layer mask which automatically accompanies the Adj Curve layer. Now with a soft white brush with the Opacity set to approx 20% and the Flow set to around 10%, and with the mask still active, you paint on the area of the image you wish to dodge. If you over-do it, hit the X key to switch your brush from white to black and paint over those areas which will reverseyour dodging,
To make it easier for you to visualize when to stop dodging, I suggest you add a Hue/Sat adjustment layer (not shown in the attachment below) on top of the curve layer and drag the Sat slider all the way to the left. This removes the effect of the color and will allow you to better see when the luminosity of the dodged area matches that of its surroundings.
When you have finished dodging, you will notice that the dodged area may be over or under saturated making the color look wrong. There are two primary ways you can correct it.
The first is to add a Hue/Sat adj layer on top of the curve layer. Hold the Alt key down and drag the layer mask on top of the Hue/Sat adj layer. When the dialog box comes up asking you if you want to replace the mask, say yes. Now drag the Sat slider to the left until the dodged area color matches the undodged areas. See the attachment below.
The 2nd method (not shown here but mentioned in my 1st reply) is to add a blank layer above the curve layer and set that blank layer's blend mode to Color. Then using a brush at fll opacity, sample good color from undodged areas and paint over the dodged areas to correct the color.
The Hue/Sat method is very quick if it works. However for some images where the colors are very different to begin with (color stains etc) then the color adj layer is usually required.
Finally, there are a lot of D&B tutorials and threads here at RP, check them out. There are also thousands of tutorials on D&B available if you google the subject.
Regards, Murray