Best way to remove this type of shadow ?

Can anyone suggest a good way to remove the hard shadow from an image such as this one ? I have several from this shoot, I have an off camera speedlite but unfortunately the way the sun was positioned and the narrow spot we had to shoot I didn't have much to work with. I did PP on one by clone stamping but it took a while and I wasn't all that happy with the results. Any other techniques/advice ?

Thanks in advance !

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You could create a duplicate layer, shift the layer over so the shadow is covered by unshaded wall on the dupe, and mask in the unshaded part.

Clone stamp on a new layer then make layer adjustment and gaussian blur slightly to blend.

I do have Photoshop CS4 but my knowledge/skill level isn't up to where I'd like it to be. Are either of the suggestions easier than the other ?

alexxn wrote in post #13993777
I do have Photoshop CS4 but my knowledge/skill level isn't up to where I'd like it to be. Are either of the suggestions easier than the other ?

Effort wise they are doing the same thing slightly differently. You'll come across a lot of that with PS. If you are using the clone stamp tool and are unhappy with the results, what is it that you aren't happy with? Normally you will get a hard edge when you clone stamp, which is why isomorph recommended using the blur. You can also use the patch tool on the edges to blend them. Again it's just a different way to achieve the same effect. Different methods work better in different situations, but this one is pretty straight forward.

Here is a 1 minute 20 second job.

1- masked arm/hand into new layer

2- lasso tooled non shadowed area (to left of shadow)

3 cut and pasted behind arm

Would have been much cleaner around hand with larger image.

If you have Cs5 you could use your Content-Aware

Quick and dirty no clone just used magic wand to grab the shadow area. Then quick masked the hand to select and filled with paint bucket using f4ebda as the base color. Next blew it up erased around the hand and hair at the scale shown. Then added a color overlay set to lighten as seen in the image using f9eeda as the value.

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

5 minutes work, not cleaned up.

I copied the clear wall on the left onto another layer and dragged it into position, then a simple job with the eraser sorted most of the job. Recreating the softer arm shadow where it was covered was a similar exercise sampling the shadow under the arm where it was not confused with the dark shadow. Again, a quick whizz round with the eraser sorted out any "overspill".

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I dont like complex methods for this sort of thing, the results as you can see in previous posts generally leave more to be desired. Your choice to remove the shadow also makes the image look pretty fake. I kept it simple, the shadow under the hand is up to personal preference, but at least the hand itself doesnt look badly cut/pasted on.

thedcmule2 wrote in post #14004885
I dont like complex methods for this sort of thing, the results as you can see in previous posts generally leave more to be desired. Your choice to remove the shadow also makes the image look pretty fake. I kept it simple, the shadow under the hand is up to personal preference, but at least the hand itself doesnt look badly cut/pasted on.

I like simple...I have a bunch to edit, what exactly did you do ??