red eye removal tutorial

[barP]

howdy! i've learned a lot from the generosity of photographers and post processing experts on the web, but i've never been bold enough to post a tutorial of my own. i'm just too ignorant. this seems like a pretty friendly place, though, and i'd like to share some of what i've learned. one thing we all occaisionally get is red eye, and since removing it is really a novice technique, i should be reasonably qualified to explain how. so, check out my little show and tell. let me know if it helps you, if you think i'm high, if you do it differently, and/or how i can make my tutorial better. we'll all learn!

ok, here's the subject image, where our lovely young lady is looking more like a vampire than a participant in a corporate skit.



the first step i use in red eye removal is to create a new hue/saturation adjustment layer. that's the little half black, half white circle at the bottom of the layer pallet.



next, select the red channel and desturate and darken until you feel the pupils have a natural looking blackness that works with the rest of the image. in this case, i cranked the sliders all the way back, but your results may vary. you don't want the pupils to be the blackest thing in the image!



next, discard the white layer mask that automatically comes with the new adjustment layer and replace it with a black one. the fast way to do that is, with the layer highlighted, use the alt/cmd key and hit the layer mask icon at the bottom of the layer pallet. that's the little rectangle with the circle in it.



remember - white reveals and black conceals. in this case, all i want to show through is the pupils, so i plan to only reveal that portion of the layer. with the black mask in place, i then select a small brush with the appropriate softeness for the portion of the image i'm working in. in this case it's 10 pixels, full soft. to me, this is what makes layer masks so cool. notice there is no selection involved! i read something early on when i was tearing my hair out over selections that said the further i got with photoshop, the less i'd do them. that's proven to be totally true. i rarely use the "s-word" any more!



and, there you have it. a quick adjustment using levels and a crop, and this one is ready for the department newsletter.



thanks for looking and leaving some feedback!

wp.

[Jake]

She's cute.

[barP]

not exactly the feedback i was looking for, but i won't disagree!

wp.

[billbunton]

I'll agree she's cute :-). As for the tutorial, that's one way to do it. I've also found that simply drawing a square around the eye with the red-eye tool works surprisingly well

[Patti Edens]

I didn't even know there was a red eye tool, but I found it and tried it on a photo I have. Then I tried your technique. I like the results better with your technique. I see better definition between the pupil and the iris of the eye. But, maybe I just don't know how to use the red eye tool. I tried varying the pupil size and degree of darkness, but I never did get very good results.

I like it.

Thanks,

[barP]

see? that's why this is so cool! i didn't know there was a red eye tool either. there definitely wasn't in ps 7 or cs2, and i'm just warming up with cs3.

wp.

[Roy]

Sorry, there is a red eye tool is CS2 also.

[DigitalDiva]

You can also use the brush and set the mode to color and about 45% opacity. You can play with the opacity depending on the degree of redness.

[barP]

Originally Posted by Roy

Sorry, there is a red eye tool is CS2 also.

my bad! i meant cs. never had cs2.

wp.