Removing shadows?

[sayluv]

Hi-

I've been using Gimp for years but I'm a total novice. Is the dodge/burn tool the best way to remove shadows? At first I used a mask and tried messing with the exposure. That may work but my borders were not organic enough. The dodge tool seems to be working ok but having small issues. I did the front far leg and I am working on the rear far leg. I am running across an issue when I use the tool on certain areas of the leg a dark blue/green tint appears on the area. Any help would be appreciated. Thx!!

[tmanni]

These spurious colors are present in the shadows and are intensified by the dodge tool.
To remove them, several ways : one of them :
1. use the Color Picker tool in a clean area of the fur to set the foreground color; check the Sample average option with a generous radius to get an average color.
2. create a new layer filled with the foreground color on top of the dog layer and set the blending mode to either LCh Color or HSL Color.
3. create a black layer mask and paint on it with white color where spurious colors are visible.

IMO, instead of trying to enhance these degraded shadow areas, you should recreate them from scratch using the Clone Tool.

[denzjos]

What I did :
- Select the dark place on the dog (feather the selection)selection with the 
- desaturate the selection ( there is a green/blue color on this place)
- copy the selection to a new layer
- set this layer mode to 'screen'
- if not clear enough, duplicate the last layer and play with the opacity of the layer
- if satisfied, color the selection with 'Colours / Colourise' (use the picker tool to select the color from other places on the dog leg)
   

[sayluv]

Thanks everyone. I need to keep experimenting. I roughed out the back leg with clone, it's a bit repetitive but what do you think otherwise?