How do I gimp out the person in the background of this image?

[josephellengar]

Hi. I'm a beginning-to-intermediate Gimp user and have been tasked with removing the woman in the background from the image that is attached to this post. I am having a lot of trouble doing it. I have been able to get rid of her and paste a copy of the background into that area but I am running into a few problems.

1) the shadow of the woman in the foreground gets messed up
2) The edge of the background that I filled in is obvious, even when I use the pattern from the wall.
3) It looks like the background area that I fill in is obscuring the hair of the woman in the foreground

Can anybody help me do this? It would be much appreciated. Thank you!

[limestone]

I would have used the clone tool

[JustinR]

Like this?

[realzippy]

...the clock?

[deewatsa]

?

[TeoBigusGeekus]

My go.

Hey, that's cool, let's do this more often :P

[josephellengar]

Wow! Thanks everybody!

[josephellengar]

?

Took me a second to get it :)

[pwnst*r]

...the clock?

Lol, pay attention.

[realzippy]

Lol, pay attention.

...suggested to remove the clock also,it is kind of ugly in the backround.
BTW,wondering if it's 7 am or pm at that party...

[Lucradia]

If you can't physically remove the person, use the clone tool on a background nearby, and alter colors as needed using lasso or something, and using colorize.

[josephellengar]

...suggested to remove the clock also,it is kind of ugly in the backround.
BTW,wondering if it's 7 am or pm at that party...

7PM. It's a kids' party.

I agree, the clock is ugly in the background, but I had a problem with removing it. If you look closely at the woman dressed in white, due to the flash the wall on her two sides are two different shades of gray. The clock sort of covers the gradient. When I tried to clone it out, I was unable to get a smooth transition from the one color to the other, even when I smudged it.