A wavefront reconstruction and three-dimensional (3-D) shape measurement method by a two-step phase-shifting algorithm with arbitrary phase shift in (0,pi) is proposed. In this method, only two phase-shifted intensities, with the removal of the dc term by an averaging technique in spatial domain or low-pass filter operation in the frequency domain, are needed, and the other additional measurements are no longer required. The simulation for an irregular wavefront has shown the feasibility, and the optical experiment for a 3-D face mask in the case of a sinusoidal fringe projection system has illustrated the validity of the proposed method.