Shadow Fix?

[krstlchik]

Looking for suggestions on how I can reduce the shadow across this little girl's face.

She was a very difficult subject to photograph, as she *feared* cameras, so I did a lot of shots with my 70-300mm. Unfortunately, in this one, one of the few she is actually looking at me, her mom's shadow leaves a line across her face.

[vsa]

Obviously the best way would be to reshoot it... but yea might not be an option here.

The solution depends on what software you have access to and do you know how to use those. I don't know your background with Photoshop f.ex. but I'm gonna assume you haven't fiddled too much with it. Removing that shadow isn't easy and you might need to learn the skills it takes first, which might take a good while.

But anyways. Here's what I did:
- curves (with mask) layer to brighten up the arm shadow in the face
- some brushing to get the face color right in the shadow area
- more brushing to brighten the face
- eye fix with brush (because her left eye looked really dark compared to the right)
- one color layer to fade the other shadows on the shirt a bit



Looks kinda weird having the hand shadow cut half way.

[Flesheater]

If your using photoshop, try messing with the "shadow/highlight" editing tool.

and maybe even the levels.


If you took it in raw, when you load it into photoshop, in the raw editing window, theres a tab for levels and a shadow bar, if you drag it over to the brighter side it will probably do some good.

[windrider86]

another way is to use the clone tool and have it set on lighten. play with the opcaity level until it matches up to the right shade

[jprime84]

The dodge tool in CS4 works great for lightening shadows.

[krstlchik]

I have Photoshop 7 currently. Here was one attempt, though the example above looks better than mine!

I duplicated the background layer, lightened with curves (w/layer mask I removed everything from this layer except the shadowed area).



As with everything else, live and learn. I'll be more mindful of the shadows when I'm shooting the future, for sure.