Get Rid of Flash Shadow

Can someone set me on a path in Photoshop toward getting rid of the shadow on this girl's leg created by the flash? I know I could clone stamp, but thought there might be a better way to isolate the shadow. Thanks.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Although I think that cloning is a good tool, how about this:

You could duplicate the layer and have a layer mask on the top layer. Then go to the lower layer, unlock it, and move the lower layer to one side so that the texture and colour of her jeans is below the shadow on the top layer. The go back to the top layer, make sure that you are in the layer mask, set your foreground colour to black, and using the paint tool, erase out the top layer which should reveal the jeans underneath. If you make a mistake change your foreground colour to white. This will "un-erase" the shadow.

If you had bounced the flash it would have cast a more diffused shadow. You could also drag the shutter to take advantage of the ambient light.

Still the harsh shadow on her leg isn't all that bad. It's when it's behind her head that I find it objectionable.

Crop it right above her knee.

Dave, unfortunately I have not had the money for an xternal flash unit, so have been relying on the popup module. Although most shots are underexposed, if I shoot in RAW, like this shot, I can recover the shot. The problem of course are the shadows.

Dave, I am not sure I understand this. After duplicating the background layer, the duplicate is on top, and background is locked below. I don't know how to unlock the background layer. I wasn't aware that you could even do this.

Also, can you explain what you mean by "mov[Ing] the lower layer to one side.."

Thanks..

to unlock the background, just double click on it. this will ask you to create a name for the layer. The default name is Layer 0.

I would recommend that you name your layers if you use a lot of them. Otherwise it gets confusing.

Wow, neat tip. I copied the layer, selected the knee using the wand moved her knee over to the edge of the shadow and recropped just a bit to get rid of the overlap. Shadow gone in less than a minute.

I tried this for one hour and still couldnt do it. Every now and then i try to do one of these tricks and cant. This is what stumped me on this one.
I opened the photo in CS2, then created a duplicate layer of the photo. That was easy so then you started talking about a mask layer but didnt mention how to make that one, or whether the mask layer was the newly created duplicate layer. Ok so i have the main, a duplicate of it and now i make some mask layer for a total of 3 layers. Or i have the main, a duplicate which is also called the mask layer. Dont know which one so i tried to make a mask layer but it just made the duplicate the mask. Now i have 2 layers. The main and a second one which is a duplicate/mask in one. I have them both visible and when i move one i cant tell where to put it because the other is behind it so how do you put the knee on the shadow when the shadow behind it is not visible. The wand only selects a portion of the pants and moves that portion not the whole picture. I paint over the top layer and the whole layer turns black and when i make the main layer visible it looks just like it did before i spent the hour working on it. Shadow still there duplicate layer painted black. I sure do hate photoshop right now.

Ok. I got it, finally! What I ended up doing is clicking the eyeball on the bottom layer to make it invisible, and painting with black on the dup layer. that erased the pixels and left the transparent background. Then I made the bottom layer visible, and nudged the bottom layerto the top left until the hole filled in with the sweater texture. One key was using paint strokes that matched the direction of the sweater weave and leave parts unpainted in a random way. I left a little shadow to (try) to make it look natural. I noticed that I picked up a little texture in the bottom right that I didn't mean to, but it was a good learning experience nonetheless about masks, and I am generally happy with it, especially considering the original raw image.

I notice that if you really take the time to work on things yourself and then ask questions, the people on this forum are fantastic in helping. I have learned so much here. Thanks!

On this picture I actually did capture sharpening using an edge mask and unsharp mask, then did the touch up work, then cropped, then output sharpened. Here's the original and the final:

Original RAW:

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

ascohen. Good job on fixing that. You mentioned your pics are dark and I can tell from the one you posted that it is. Are you shooting in auto mode? If so they will come out dark everytime. Try P and move the exposure dial up a couple of notches.

Actually, I always shoot in shutter priority when using the built in flash. Actually that's why they are so underexposed, because the built-in is not sufficient. I just can't afford "a real" flash unit right now.

Look around for a used Vivitar 283. You lose all of the E-TTL and that's not all that bad a thing. It'll cost you less than $50 and then you can get the flash off of your hot shoe (another $20 for the synch cord) and you can start to do this stuff. That built in flash is for emergency only and "I'll take the crap it produces".

At a certain point you have to accept that you won't be able to make good flash shots until you make the right investment. Being poor is tough ****.

Yeah. I guess. I am actually looking at getting the Sigma Super DG-500 or whatever it's called from B&H.