Well, taking away some shadows with photoshop actually doesn’t help much – as the whole painting would need altering some. On my computer screen, when the image is about 1.5 inches high , the alterations made lessening the shadow are incongruous with the rest of the painting, making the eyes and eyebrows too dark, and the lips too red, and the edge of the face somehow not right. When making a portrait therefore, look at the shadows before beginning. In the original, I looked at the shadows, and painted them, but did not even see them (in a sense), as to me, they were just shadows, without meaning. Now they are still shadows without meaning, but I see that others might see them as containing meaning. Thus, Whistler once wrote something I believe, about how one should not read too much into an image.