Natural looking eyes?

[Barbara P.]

I'm having a problem with fixing the red eye (actually WHITE eye) on my pictures. How can I get natural looking eyes when the people have bright white circles instead of pupils or red eye? I've used the paint brush tool, the paint bucket tool with some varied degrees of success, but a lot of the time the folks just end up looking possessed or like they're wearing funky contact lenses. I've even used the elliptical marquee tool and then tried darkening it, but it doesn't look good on the shots I've got.

[Jodi Frye]

Barb, white is a tricky color to cover but if you use the elliptical marquee tool and make a selection around the eye>go to toolbar>layer>new fill layer>solid color and with blending mode set to 'multiply' or 'darken' and pick the color of eye you can achieve a cover up. In the layers palette you can lower the opacity as well. You can also use the fill 'gradient' instead of solid color at a 'radial' setting from innner dark to light. This is just one way i would do it because i like playing with fill layers but I'm certain you'll get other suggestions. I'm one that never uses the red eye tool so I'm not normal ;)

[Barbara Brundage]

I myself zoom in to the point where it doesn't look like an eye anymore. You want to see each pixel. Then sample from the good pixels and fill the white ones one by one. That way you can keep the same color blending that would be there if there were enough info for the red eye brush and also leave a realistic white highlight in the middle.

[Barbara P.]

Okay, I guess I'm remedial---a remedial novice at that. I tried what I thought you wrote. Made the selection around the eye, went to layer>new fill layer>solid color, set it to multiply the first time, darken the second try, with various ranges of opacity and chose my color (a nice dark blue/gray). My end result was still a big white spot. What am I doing wrong?? :-o

[Barbara Brundage]

No, multiply only works on colors that are there. If the eye is really "blown out" ie there's nothing left but white, then white is what you are "multiplying" and white times white equals white.

[Beth Haney]

Barbara P. - Jodi makes stuff like that sound sooo simple! :) I use the same method as Barbara Brundage, because I'd probably sit for hours struggling with the layer system, too. For me, the "long" way usually winds up saving a whole lot of time!

[Barbara P.]

Okay, I guess I'm remedial---a remedial novice at that. I tried what I thought you wrote. Made the selection around the eye, went to layer>new fill layer>solid color, set it to multiply the first time, darken the second try, with various ranges of opacity and chose my color (a nice dark blue/gray). My end result was still a big white spot. What am I doing wrong?? :-o

[Jodi Frye]

'multiply' and 'darken' fill layers are the only 2 that work on white as overlay layers. Not sure why that didn't work for you. I'm using PE1

[Nancy S]

Barbara P,

As Barbara B. mentioned, don't forget to leave a catch light in the eye, it is a nice touch.

[Barbara P.]

Thanks! I'll work on it. You guys are great!

[Barbara P.]

Alright. I know it's unorthodox (IS there an actual "orthodox" way?), but what I finally ended up doing after messing with this for TOO long is......... I copied and pasted some simitlar eyes. The guy's sister has similar retnas. The gradient tool with the elliptical marquee worked great (blended like the other Barbara mentioned) to fix her eyes and I copied and pasted them onto him. It looks good. Whatever works!

[Kenneth Liffmann]

Barbara P
Have had good luck with this method:
Open image
Create new layer at top of stack and change mode to saturation
Choose black as foreground color
With paint brush of appropriate size, paint red part of eye
Duplicate this layer and change mode to overlay
Adjust opacity of overlay layer to effect the degree of darkening

You might try softlight, darken, or multiply for the mode in the duplicate layer
Ken