Remove shadow from iPhone pictures

Hi Lizz,

As a great-grandfather I have a special gift:  I can recognize exceptional work by very talented, very young artists such as this one. I suggest that you take the drawing outdoors (where even lighting is not a problem), put it on a flat surface on the ground and – being careful not to cast a shadow of yourself on the art – take some photographs while holding the camera very still.

You  may find that the image keystones a bit – the art appears in the shot as wider at the bottom than at the top rather than rectangular. That is easily correctable in Photoshop by using the Edit > Transform command. Then crop away the non-art surrounding area. Good luck to you and the young talent.

Oh, one more suggestion: Before taking the photograph, have the artist sign and date the work. Future historians will appreciate that. 

Hi Lizz5C7A you could spend 5 hours retouching an image to improve it, or take a fraction of a second to take a better shot in the first place. Granted that this may take time to setup and to purchase lighting equipment etc. You could frame the shot on the iPhone and use the timer option, so that your shadow is not in the shot. This is the direction that the replies have been so far, getting it right at initial capture.

That being said, I appreciate that you are looking for an answer on how to improve the current shots, rather than methods to take better photos next time.

Photoshop offers a number of tools and there are many different techniques, often very much image dependent. How one image is corrected may not work for another image. In many cases, it will take a combination of tools and techniques.

You can explore the shadow/highlight command, which can help to even out lighting.

You can look into using the dodge and burn tools, which allow brush based lightening or darkening. Another option is to use a technique where a 50% grey filled layer is set to say softlight/overlay blend mode and then a brush painting 1-49% black is used to lighten, or 51-100% to darken.

You can use layer masks and adjustment layers to restrict where edits are applied. 

There are channel blending options via the apply image command.

Some methods are simple, others more complex, some for beginners and others for experts.

Perhaps if you searched the web for tutorials on evening out lighting, or reducing shadow.

Hope this helps!

I took this picture with my iPhone. On the right side there is a shadow.  How do I get rid of the shadow?

For future use, you might try some of these tips for avoiding putting your shadow into the original shot:

https://www.adorama.com/alc/photographing-people-in-the-sun-outdoor-portrait-photography-part-1/

For better assistance with a specific photo, please attach it with the insert image button in a Reply window. It's possible the shadow can be lightened.

~ Jane