removing unwanted shadows

[SitPretty]

We often go to the local animal shelter and take pictures for them to use on petfinder and their website.

We try to set up some shots, but for the most part we get the animals the best we can, take 5 or 6 shots, then move on.

this Calico cat had some great shots, but his eyes weren't quite right, then in this photo, his eyes were good, but lighting was bad. Don't have a lot of time to spend photoshoping the poor shelter kitty, but figured it would be nice to show what can be done. This was done in about 15 minutes.

Before:



So this is what I did.

Duplicate layer, adjusted levels until the color on the face was what I wanted (dragged white to the left until it looked better). Lowered the black a little as well.
used my eraser tool and a fat brush and deleted the background and highlighted portion of the face.
burned the eyes to remove a little glare. shadows, 7%
rubber stamped around the eyes to clean them up. (i usually use around 30% opacity) If I had more time i would have cleaned the kitty up before the shoot.

finally I added a photo filter to the entire picture. warming 81

here is the finished results:




There might be some faster ways to do some of this, any tips are always welcome. I know the best thing to do would have been better lighting

Also, this little guy and a lot of his friends need homes - www.awanj.org

[wannabehorsephotographer]

What a cute kitty! That's so awesome that you help in such a great way! We have gotten all our pets from a shelter, and they've turned out great. You did a good job improving the shot - thanks for sharing!
~wannabe

[gold leaf]

Sometimes the lighting just won't be right. You did a great job of improving this photo!

[Nobie]

Very well done, thanks for sharing this.

[RxFotoGirl]

Awww what a pretty kitty, thanks for going step by step with what you did, I'm a newbie at editing and am always up for learning how to do stuff. It looks really good.