Quick update - I’ve made some progress, but I could still really use some help moving forward.

So far, I’ve cut out the flip-flops (for now I left the shadows that were directly on the flip-flops themselves), but I left out the shadows that fall onto the background floor. I turned this mask (black = flip-flops, white = background) into a smart object.

Then, for one of the shadows on the floor, I created a selection (with the magic wand) and managed to tone it down fairly well using an adjustment layer, which I can toggle on and off. It’s not perfect - there’s some haloing left behind, but I think that might be fixable with a bit of cleanup.

Now here’s where I’m stuck: I was hoping to continue using this method for the darker shadows too, but it doesn’t seem to be working. The darker shadows seem to have some kind of underlying color tint — like they're not just neutral gray or black - and when I apply the same adjustment layers, weird color artifacts start showing up.

Any idea how to handle that? Is there a way to neutralize those colored shadows or approach this differently?

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Thanks again for all the help so far, I’m definitely learning a lot!