Need help removing shadows from a portrait(I messed up guys!)

[MissCream]

I did a few things, I played with the curves (ctrl+m and moved the middle of the line up and the very bottom left to the right). Dodged a bit on the left side of her face. I used auto contrast & tone (I don't usually do that but in this case it worked). I matched the color of the background around the shadow and painted that color over the shadow. Then I used a little bit of lens blur on her face in a different layer, masked it and put it where I wanted it. After that I made another layer, smart sharpened it, masked it and made it sharp on the eyes, mouth and hair only. I hope this makes a little sense, I'm awful at explaining myself! Oh and I also did some burning around her eyelashes.

 

[KmH]

It's inexperience, not stupidity.

 

[SimpleFoto]

Ok, I know I'm a little late to this party but here is my edit and a video showing how I did it.

Thanks Foxx for letting me use the image in a tutorial

 

[bianni]

here is another way to do it, using layer mask. duplicate the image and put a blank layer below it and fill it using the gradient tool. apply layer mask on the top layer and brush away the original bg to reveal the new bg layer below it. vary the softness or hardness of the brus depending on the edge that you are erasing. Adjust with curves to lighten a bit, merge.

 

[MaMaManda]

Same thing here who can explain how to fix this =/

 

[bianni]

Select the image and place in another layer and make a different bg