As always there's so many different ways to tackle the job, but what I did was...
(1) Adjust the gamma of the image till it's looking like the high key result you're looking for. It will probably start to look too light, so add a little contrast - I just used the contrast slider. Use these two tools alternately till you get the result you want without the side of the face blowing out.
I didn't have to do any feathered masks or localised editing to levels at all.
(2) Adjust the skin tones to a natural looking colour using the RGB sliders. You'll probably just need to add a little red.
(3) Set the clone tool (Rubber Stamp tool in Photoshop) fairly small, say 7 ish pixels. Set the opacity of the clone tool fairly low and clone the catchlight across from the other eye. You can click on the same spot several times to get the density of the catchlight looking natural.
(4) To get the plain white background...
Set the background (paper) colour to white.
Select the magic wand and click on the background. It will select part of the background where the tones are within a given variance. If it overlaps the baby at all then undo it and reduce the tolerance until it doesn't.
I use PSP but the following also applies to Photoshop, but just check on the keyboard commands which may be different.
Having got your first part of the background selected without overlapping the baby, hold down the Shift key
and keep it depressed from now on. Begin clicking in the parts of the background which aren't selected. You'll see your selection mask starting to grow with each click. Any time that the mask overlaps onto the baby just go to Edit and Undo (keeping that Shift key depressed) which will just undo the last click. Reduce the tool tolerance until baby isn't selected when you click. You may have to do this a couple of times on areas of little contrast between the background and lighter parts of the baby. Eventually you'll have a clean tight mask around the baby and the whole background selected. This does work... honest, even with quite difficult backgrounds. Don't feather the completed mask!
Now go to Edit and then Cut which cuts out the background leaving the pure white background (paper) colour.
That's it! You may need to do a little local softening of edges if they appear too sharp but you can easily do that with freehand feathered masks and then applying the soften tool to taste.
You can do it. There's no magic or easy way to get into this stuff, it's just a case of practice, more practice and trying different ways of doing things.
