Photoshop Red Eye Fix for Difficult Cases - People and Pets

http://www.steeletraining.com - Fix difficult red eye that can't be fixed with the automatic red-eye removal tool in Photoshop. Includes people and pets with green eye, yellow eye, etc.

For the full-length course "Photoshop Basics for Photographers" visit SteeleTraining.com.

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Closed Caption:

we're gonna look at how you deal with
problem red-eye and photoshop the kind
of red-eye that can't be fixed with the
normal automatic red eye removal tool
which works pretty well most the time on
people but there's some cases where it
won't turn on animals doesn't so we're
going to look at the tough cases
so first going to duplicate my layer
with command J which I like to do
because I like to work on my background
layer and I'm going to zoom in a little
bit to get a look at these eyes now
normally you would be able to just use
the automatic red eye removal tool which
is here it's on the little panel with
the Spot Healing Brush redeye tool and
you just come in and you would click in
here and photoshop would fix it and it
would look fine but in this case there's
this extra weird little highlight
because this hot spot in the red eye and
just doesn't look doesn't look right
it's not it's better but it doesn't look
quite right so we're going to undo that
and we're going to do it the serious way
we're going to select the red part of
the I the pupil and they're a couple of
ways I could do that you could get the
magic wand and come in and start
clicking to get all the little pieces of
it but when you have the whole pupil
visible like we do here i prefer to do a
simpler way so i'm going to undo that
and i'm going to pick the elliptical
marquee tool right here and I'm just
going to trace a circle around the part
that I want right there i'm going to
zoom in a little more so I've got the
whole pupil circle and I don't want to
wipe out the highlight in the eye so I
want to unselect that and i'm going to
do that by getting the magic wand tool
i'm just gonna hold alt while I click in
that highlight 2d selected with alltel
that deflects so now I don't get
selected is this donut shape here that I
want to recolor so the first thing we
want to do is desaturate the color so it
has no red there's a number of ways we
can do that the quick way is to use the
keyboard shortcut which on the mac is
command shift you on a pc its control
shift you and I think of you as
unsaturated and that just takes the
color out
so now the colors gone all we need to do
is darken it now we could use the burn
tool which would be just fine but in
this case I'm going to use the
paintbrush with black which will have
approximately the same effect so I'm
going to you be4 my brush make sure my
foreground color is set to black set my
opacity pretty low like twenty percent
here and then I'm just going to paint in
here and I don't want to go black I just
want to get a dark gray because people's
usually don't look totally black and I'm
just gonna kinda paint around in here
until I get try to get it as even as I
can get rid of that hotspot get into a
good dark grey and I'm gonna be select
and go back out see how that looks
yep that looks good so now I just need
to do the same to the other eye that
looks like it's a nice dark gray so i
will select and going back out and it
looks perfect
now we're gonna look at pets because the
automatic red-eye to almost never works
on animals because their eyes turned
weird colors green like Leo here or
sometimes purple or yellow so we're
going to fix this guy up with a
different little trick and the first
thing we want to do is we're going to
paint to desaturate the I we're going to
do that by getting the paintbrush and
we're going to make sure the brush mode
is set to color up here in this little
drop-down this long list pick color and
make sure your foreground color is set
to black and our opacity is 100-percent
by painting in this mode
we're going to be able to desaturate the
I so you can see as I paint in here it
just takes the greene takes the green
out it's turning it cray and it leaves
highlight intact it doesn't change
anything about the dark around the edges
of the iso you don't have to be super
careful
it keeps the keeps the sort of shape of
the eye there
we're just going to desaturate by
painting and
this mode now we got both eyes d
saturated now we just need to darken it
and in this case I'm going to use the
burn tool so i'm going to select burn
tool there i'm going to burn the
mid-tones make sure it's mid tones that
are selected here because we don't want
to touch that highlight and we don't
want to touch the black around the edge
of the eye I just want to darken this
middle gray that's in there so i'm going
to set my exposure you know some around
twenty percent and then I'm just going
to come in here start burning this down
until it gets nice dark gray again we
don't want to be black and I'm not going
to worry that there's kind of a little
rim around the edge because that
actually looks a little more natural
shows that there's some shape to the is
just make this thing a totally black
bowling ball it doesn't look like a real
I anymore so I'm just going to kind of
paint around get what I can kind of let
it leave but it doesn't want to do find
some bright spots I'd switch over and
burn some highlights but this is a
pretty even a little gray
there we go of course that technique is
not just for animals that works great on
people too
ok one more example with a couple of
cats who have some more variations of
red-eye green I purple I going on here
so soon and do the guy on the left first
going to duplicate my background layer
so I'm not working on the background and
I'm gonna grab my brush make sure my
brushes in color mode
we're going to treat this guy the way we
did the dog i'm going to paint in here
to desaturate first by using the brush
in color mode turning is people gray and
sometimes you'll see that the color has
kind of spilled off onto his fur which
it did here so I'm just desaturating out
there too since he's kind of a great cat
anyway if you had a person or an animal
who wasn't very gray you might have to
use the clone stamp tool to get rid of
somewhere it spilled off like that in
this case I'll just clean up a little
bit where the color spilled out of
bounds so after desaturating it we get
the burn tool to darken it and here's
why choose whether use the burn tool or
the paintbrush
if there's detail that I want to keep I
use the burn tool like here we have that
highlight in the eye and kind of a
gradient that shows the shape of the eye
it's easier to keep that with the burn
tool and there's detail that I want to
destroy would use the paintbrush as i
did in the first example with the girl
with the red eye because they're the
detail was not real detail of variety it
was artifacts of the red-eye it's easier
to destroy it using a paintbrush
so that's how I choose which one so i
won't make you watch me do the other eye
I'll just do it quickly and then skip to
the other cat
ok now he's looking good so let's do the
other cat so whole different whole
different kind of scenario here this guy
his pupils are totally blown out there's
no detail if they're to work with it
also we basically are going to have to
paint here and before I get painting on
the pupil though I'm going to take my
brush once again in color mode because I
see I've got I've got color that has
spilled outside spilled outside is I
here so i want to desaturate some of
that where it's going out there just
clean that up just a little bit office /
and i'm going to go ahead and desaturate
the pupil to because we don't want that
extraneous color making it any harder so
now i'm going to take the paintbrush
make sure my foreground color set the
black down here didn't need to click
that and get my brush I'm going to set
the opacity around fifty percent i'm
going to switch the brush mode out of
color mode just back to normal let it be
a normal paintbrush i'm going to make it
small and i'm just going to zoom in a
little more so you can see this little
better and just paint in here until I
get this to a nice dark grey give him a
dark grey pupil
because in this case his people is
basically lost totally blown out there
is nothing to work with their so we have
to create one over on the other side
making brushing a little smaller just
come in here gonna give him some black
where that I was totally blown out back
out a little bit that looks alright
normally with this smaller piece of
people showing I wouldn't worry about
putting a highlight in here but in this
case we've got this other cat in the
shot as highlights in his eyes from the
flash it might look a little weird if
this one doesn't so i'll show you how we
do that just go in on this I and I'll
switch my paint color to white by
clicking that i'll leave the opacity
where it is and take a real little brush
may be about this size and just put a
little click in here maybe two or three
and now he's got a little highlight to
match the other guy so there you go
you've got several different techniques
there and even with really difficult
read I by trying some combination of
these techniques you can probably solve
just about any red eye problem that
you've got