How to Remove Shadows in LR 3 or PS CS5

[ilovelucydog]

I have a few pictures I'm working on that have shadows around the face etc. I'm just learning LR and CS5 and would like step by step instructions on how to remove the shadows. If you can help... THANKS!

[jiro]

Any chance you can post one image for us to try?

[ilovelucydog]

Here you go...

[jiro]

Make a selection of the face and the hat area. There is no need to include the shirt, just the face up to the part of the neck.

The way to easily make this selection is by using the QUICK SELECTION TOOL from the tools pallete. Use a small brush size when you use this. I initially used a size 6 brush on this exercise. Start to drag the brush while holding the left mouse key down from the top of the hat to the neck area. As you can see from the selection it is not that perfect which is fine. We will take away the shadow areas and clone them out by borrowing pixel data from the neighboring areas. The selection is on the face and we don't want that. What we need is the shadow and background area so we need to invert the selection. To do this, press SELECT > INVERSE. Now, we are working on the shadow and background area and we are now "protecting" the boundary for the face and the hat area.



Now, select the CLONE TOOL from the tools pallete and set the values to:
MODE: Normal
OPACITY: 100%
FLOW: 3%
aligned: CHECKED
SAMPLE: CURRENT LAYER

While pressing the ALT key, point the mouse to about 1/4" away from the edge of the shadow area that you want to take out and press the left mouse key and release it. Now, you just told the clone tool where to get the pixel data that will replace the shadow pixel data.

Since the Flow is set to only 3% we will slowly build the exchange of pixel data by continually using the clone tool to brush away the old pixels with the new ones. Continue brushing away until all the shadow areas are replaced. That's it. In less than 2 minutes, you're done.



Hope this helps, Mary.

[ilovelucydog]

Thanks. You explained it very well! It'll take me more than 2 minutes, though.

[Geezer G]

Thank you, jiro! I'm old to Photoshop (PS 3.5 to PS 7), but new to CS5. I have a large group of photos to edit as the location and conditions did not give many opportunities to avoid shadows and it did not take long to realize that I could grow very old and still be cloning images. I knew that there had to be an easier way, so I started looking. This is the ONLY forum where I found a constructive answer!

I'm going to like it here.

Thanks again.

Geezer G