Flash shadow removal

[icetraxx]

Since I posted I realised that I had several other pictures in the same series. I cheated and found one that had the blue pillow in it without the shadow. I used the magic lasso and copied it into a layer and used the clone tool and history brush to do some blending of the carpet and pillow. I am slowly teaching myself through trial and error. Thanks for yalls help it did help in understanding how to do a couple of things.
Larry

[Leah]

I firstly selected the shadow area and applied a Levels adjustment layer to that to get it as close as possible to the non-shadow areas.

That didn't hide the problem area altogether, though, so I also copied some areas of carpet over some areas of where the shadow had been, and tweaked the luminosity of the shadow areas of the cushion in the background.

There's still a trace of the shadow on the cushion, but it's significantly reduced and I don't think it's intrusive.

[kiska]

I played with this a little. Dup BG. Pen to select shadow and the rest of right side of pic ( you want good areas included in selection). Copy selection to it's own layer. Lasso(feathered) small section of shadow and move it to 'good' area. Hold down option+command (mac), move 'good area' back to what you want to replace. Also used lasso with stamp, and the patch tool. Changed mode of selection layer to multiply, 50%. BTW, intentionally left toe shadow, I kinda liked it. kiska

[icetraxx]

Is there a way to remove the flash shadow on the attached picture or would it be better to blur out the toys in the background. I haven't been sucessful in bluring the background where it looks right. Thanks in advance