Photoshop: Red Eye Fix for Difficult Cases in People and Pets
Recent versions of Photoshop have an automatic Red Eye Removal tool. But what do you do when that tool fails as it does all too often with people, and always with pets?
Here’s one technique that I like to use. I’m going to illustrate it on a pet photo featuring “green eye”, but the same trick works on people with red eye, too.
1. Zoom in on the eye of your subject
2. Get your Paintbrush (Keyboard shortcut B)
3. Set your foreground color to black
4. In the options bar, set the brush mode to Color, opacity 100%
By painting with the brush in this mode, we will desaturate the area that we paint.
5. Using a small brush with a medium-soft edge, paint the mis-colored part of the eye to desaturate it.
Since all we are doing is desaturating, this leaves the highlight and other gradients that reveal the shape of the eye intact. If we simply painted black we would destroy these details that make the eye look realistic.
After desaturating, all we need to do is darken the pupil.
6. Get the Burn tool
7. In the options bar, select Midtones, Exposure 20%
8. Paint gradually in the pupil to burn (darken) the Midtones
By restricting our burn to the Midtones, we avoid destroying the highlight in the eye or darkening that natural rim around the eye. We only affect the middle gray that was originally colored red or green.
9. Darken the pupil to a reasonably dark gray (not pure black), and you’re done!
Of course, this technique won’t work in every case, because there are a lot of different types of “red eye” in people and animals, but it’s usually my first go-to method for tough cases.
To see a free video which includes this and several more techniques for difficult cases, visit SteeleTraining.com.
About the Author
: Phil Steele is the founder of SteeleTraining.com where you‚Äôll find free tutorials on photography, Photoshop, Lightroom and more. This article is based on an excerpt from his video training course “Photoshop Basics for Photographers”.
15 Responses to “Photoshop: Red Eye Fix for Difficult Cases in People and Pets” - Add Yours
April 7th, 2011 at 12:03 am
Brilliant!
April 7th, 2011 at 12:43 am
EXCELLENT tip
April 7th, 2011 at 12:48 am
Huh…that’s awesome!
April 7th, 2011 at 4:00 am
Awesome! I shoot my dogs a lot and hate getting “green eye”. It always takes me forever to get the green out and have it look nice. I can’t wait to try out this technique.
Thanks!
April 7th, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Burn the eyes…nice trick!
April 7th, 2011 at 7:47 pm
This technique is of very limited use. The dog has black eyes, that’s the only condition under which this technique will work. Try this on a person with blue eyes or a Siberian Husky and see where it takes you.
April 7th, 2011 at 7:50 pm
Trent: The dog in this example actually has brown eyes; not black. This technique is applied to the pupil of the eye (which is always near-black), not the iris, which can be any colour at all without having an impact on the technique.
Cheers.
April 7th, 2011 at 10:40 pm
This tip is one I’ll put to much good use! I’ve never been able to fix “green eye” to any satisfaction. Thanks for another valuable article.
April 8th, 2011 at 12:37 am
The Kodak Picture Kiosks found at retail outlets have an automated pet eye retouch feature that performs this technique without Photoshop.
April 8th, 2011 at 5:50 am
Funny…the green tint to the dog’s eyes didn’t bother me. However, seeing how nice the pupils look afterwards is amazing!
Great technique! Thanks!
April 8th, 2011 at 9:34 am
Thanks for this, great timing … I’ve just taken some great shots of a schaunser, but all with green eyes, now I know what to do!
April 8th, 2011 at 7:47 pm
Really great tip thanks. I hate the red eye removal tool!
April 12th, 2011 at 11:17 pm
so helpful! Great use of tools!
April 27th, 2011 at 2:29 pm
Excellent, thank you! Very clear and concise instructions.
May 25th, 2011 at 7:41 am
This is a really helpful tip! I have always had trouble making the eye look realistic after darkening it in with black. Restricting to midtones can help prevent this. Thanks!
Leave a Reply