Bright, Shiny, Perfect Eyes

[yiweiang]

Hi all,

I was wondering how people get those really crisp, shiny, perfect eyes in photos? Is there a way to get that in photoshop? (I heard someone saying dodge and burn, but how?)

Thanks all!
Yi Wei Ang

[Nicole]

If you're talking about the kind of doll / glass eyes look, try these links for how to do it:

• Making eyes POP in Photoshop
• Eyes of glass
• Tutorial by Tennessee_Gator

[Nicole]

D'oh, as Jim pointed out to me, that second link only works if you're a member of the Utata group on Flickr

This was posted by Darkroomhacker:

1.) Zoom to "Actual Pixels" (using the magnifying glass).

2.) Duplicate your layer (cntrl + J), this is in case we make any mistakes we don't ruin the original.

3.) Enter quick mask mode. To do this, simply press "Q" on your keyboard. A little note about quick masks, on your color swatch; black marks and white removes. So if you are marking (black) it will show up as red and if you are removing (white), it will just vanish.

4.) Choose a soft brush (faded brush) with 0% hardness and say maybe about 30-50px in size(or whatever you prefer).

5.) Now paint the entire IRIS and PUPIL (it will paint the color red as previously mentioned). Do not paint the whites of the eye. If you make a mistake, don't worry about it we will fix it shortly.

6.) When you are satisfied that you have the entire iris and pupil filled in we can begin cleaning it up a bit. Press X on your keyboard. This will change the swatch from black to white (to remove). Now begin painting the areas of red you don't want (to get any red out of the whites of the eye). If you remove too much, just hit X again to paint red (I am sure you get the idea on toggling with X).

7.) Here is where I assume that BOTH eyes have had their irises and pupils filled in. Lets make them reflect now. Exit out of Quick Mask mode by pressing "Q" again. You will notice that entire image including the iris has a marquee around it. This would be okay if we just wanted to forget about the irises/pupils and save everything else. However, we only want to work with the irises/pupils.

8.) Lets inverse the marquee by pressing (CNTRL + SHIFT + i). Now the marquee only covers the iris (just like it should). Before we can start making magic, we need to hide our future edit points by feathering our selection (marquee). To do so we goto SELECT then FEATHER (if you are using CS3 you might have to goto Select > Modify > Feather). If you use hi-res photos like I do (I use a nikon D50) then you will want to feather it by 2 or 3 (depending on the size of the image). I usually feather at 3.

**Remember, the higher the feather number, the bigger the blend. Feathering simply blends either side of the marquee together***

9.) Now that we have feathered our selection, lets extract the irises. We do this by simply pressing CNTRL + J (to duplicate the layer). You will notice your marquee has vanished, don't worry you have extracted the irises and should be on the current duplicated layer).

10.) Now goto FILTER > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask

When the window opens up, make sure preview is enabled. Turn your threshold completely to zero (we never want to increase the threshold). Now with the other two sliders, simply move them around and watch the eyes. Play until you have a desired effect that you are satisfied with. Don't worry if it seems a bit exaggerated (I will show you a recovery trick).

Moving on....

So you found an awesome look, but it seems a bit exaggerated, you click ok anyways. On the duplicated layer (for the eyes) simply set the blend mode to normal and the opacity to either 25% or 50% you will still get the desired effect, just in more realistic terms.

This is how you obtain reflective eyes. I like how the method just pulls the images (that are trapped within the eye) right to the surface. This technique does NOT look good applied to the whites of the eye. When you are done with everything, merge your layers (cntrl + shift + E) and flatten your image (do not flatten your image if you have other edits to do).

Three examples by Darkroomhacker: 1, 2, 3

Note: If I can actually find this text in a public post somewhere I'll link to it.

[amy-rose]

i agree that way of doing things for the most part.
a difference that i do is i:
ctl+j the layer to where i have a full copy and then i add the sharpen filter to the whole layer. then i add a black mask by alt+clicking the add mask layer button and paint with white to the iris to reveal its sharpness. this way i can sharpen other areas of the images if i want to and i'm not restricted to the eyes alone.
Don't forget you can change the opacity of the whole layer and/or the brushes you are painting with around your image too so that variously places are differing in their sharpness.