color replacement

[shoreboy]

I just signed up the other day, and as an aside, was so happy to see that it's all referred to as "retouching" and not "editing". I've been in the photo biz for over 20 years and that's always annoyed me. I guess what they say about old dogs might be true.
My question is-- I've been trying to figure out how to replace color and have not had success yet. I've read through the posts relating to that and to be honest, have not attempted all the options for techniques yet. But I'm wondering if I'm expecting too much with the particular image I've been working with. What I'm attaching is just a portion of the image but is the element I'm concerned with. It's a brown suede shoe that I would like to make some shade of white to match other clothing items in the photo.
Am I off my rocker by thinking this could even be done?

[Tony W]

Hi shoreboy, welcome to RetouchPro. You are no more off your rocker than most here .

I am sure there are many alternative but I decided to bring the image into Lab mask the shoe and on a curves layer adjust the L channel to lighten and slightly flatten then a an b channels to get close(ish) to white. With a little more work it could look ok.

Hope this might help and give you some ideas

[shoreboy]

Thanks for the response. I will attempt this. There's so much about PS I do not know, but that's why I joined, to gain knowledge from those more adept than I.