My attempts = skin disease

[Sfitzter]

Not quite being a pro, but no slouch either, I made an offer to a friend to edit a rather nice picture of their child. The problem is that there is a nasty shadow over the childs face.
I tried most of the tricks that I know and when my (limited) knowledge expired, followed some step by step guides, but everything I attempted ended up with the child looking as though he had a skin disease.
I wonder if someone might be kind enough to offer some advice. I use Corel Paintshop Photo Pro X3 - perhaps I have the wrong software?

I will attatch the picture (with the consent of my friend) and of course, you are welcome to have a bash yourself.

Many Thanks in advance,

Stephen F

 

[KmH]

Does Corel Paintshop Photo Pro X3 have layers, masking, and blending mode capabilities?

I used Photoshop CS5 quick and dirty for illustration purposes only. With the original, larger image and more care, the outcome can look much better.

I opened the imahe and duplicated the background layer. Which becomes Layer 1.

I then made a layer mask, but when I did I held down the 'Alt' key so the mask was black. (black hides, white reveals). I then changed the blending mode of Layer 1 to 'Screen' which makes the entire layer much brighter.
But, the layer has a black layer mask which hides the brightness the Screen blending mode produces.

Since 'white reveals' I then made my forwground color white, and selected the 'Brush' tool. Setting the Brush tool to an appropriate size I then 'painted away' the black mask that covered the shadowed parts of the boy.
I flattened the image layers and repeated the entire above procedure a second time, but painted the entire boy and swing (except the chain).

I then lowered the opacity of the second Layer 1 until it looked about right. Oh, I cloned the round shadow from the bridge of his nose too.

 

[Peano]

Done in Photoshop and cropped to 8x10. If you want the full-size, email me (there's an email button on my website).

 

[bianni]

Done with cs2. Used shadows/highlights. added a blank layer. used eyedropper tool to select skin tone beside shadows and using soft brush, opacity set to 10%, brushed away the shadows. merged. saved

 

[KmH]

All of which shows that the same thing can usually be accomplished many differnt ways, which is one of the wonders of image editing.