Photoshop Tutorial - Red Eye Removal
These days nearly every camera on the market has some sort of red-eye reduction facility, trouble is, it's not a certainty to work every time! There comes a time when every photographer needs to roll their sleeve and get to work on extracting as much red as possible. Here we'll use the red-eye removal tool, and then take complete control with a more manual procedure known to me as paint, blend and burn!
Unfortunately, because of the 10 minute time limit I've had to edit out the background information and reasons for attracting red-eye. To view the whole tutorial in higher quality please visit-
http://www.3photoshop.com
Closed Caption:
i'm going to open up a photograph here
in sight old birthday 28.jpg which is
actually a photograph of my sister
highly on her birthday this year and if
we zoom into the eyes we can see that
unfortunately we've got a problem with
red-eye and it's affecting both eyes the
right far more than the left as it turns
out and when I use the left and right
expressions by the way I'm going to be
talking about those relative to the
camera just so we're on the same
wavelength here now I'm going to come up
here to the file menu I'm going to
select file info and under the heading
of camera data one we're gonna see
something very interesting you can see
that under the heading of flash we have
an entry called red-eye reduction
meaning that the cameras red-eye
reduction feature was active when this
photograph was taken
i'm going to close the file info books
so if the anti-red I feature was
switched on
then how comes we still get red on our
photograph well when anti-red I
technology is turned on you'll find the
camera flashes twice when taking a
photograph the first flash is bright
enough to cause the I to protect itself
against bright light so the iris closes
causing the pupils to contract which in
turn reveals less of the retina at the
back of the eye the second flashes then
fired as the photograph is taken
now what could have happened here is the
highly could have blinked was the first
flash was fired or she may have been
looking away from the camera which would
decrease the effectiveness of the first
flash and although you'll generally find
red-eye reduction to be fairly good you
always get times when it doesn't quite
work out the way you want it and when
that happens you'll need to be able to
turn to photoshop to repair the image so
let's take a look at how we can go about
repairing the image right here inside of
Photoshop i'm going to zoom in here to
the left I first of all where we've not
got too much of a problem
and you can see that we've still got the
iris intact which is the colored part of
the eye and we've also got the shadow
and highlight information here on the
pupil
the only problem is that the pupil has
turned a devilish red color now i'm
going to come over here to the tools
palette and select the red-eye removal
tool which may be in a different
location depending on what version of
photoshop you're running now this isn't
the way out usually work but it is a
great tool for a quick fix solution and
I'll show you why in the options bar we
get to settings for this tool a pupil
size and a Darkin amount and you'll
generally find as a general kind of rule
here that the default settings of fifty
percent work pretty good now what I'm
going to do here is click inside the eye
and photoshop gets rid of the redness
automatically just like so this is
working by desaturating the area and
then darkening it off with something
like the burn tool which is just how we
used to get rid of red eye inside a
photoshop before the red-eye removal
tool
okay i'm going to hit ctrl Z to undo
that modification and move over to the
right
I where we have a different kind of
problem and this time the red eye as we
can see has affected not just the pupil
but the IRS as well so we're going to go
ahead and fix the colored iris as well
this time I'm going to start off by
creating a new layer by clicking the new
layer icon at the bottom of the layers
palette then i'm going to name it right
I so we know which adjustment this is
that I'm just going to make sure i can
see both eyes in the window and then
select the color picker by clicking the
foreground color swatch at the bottom of
the tools palette
now i'm going to go ahead and select a
green that roughly matches the color of
Hayley's eyes and if you feel you're
gonna destroy a fair bit from the color
you need then always err on the side of
a deeper color and we can blend that in
a bit later on I'm going to click OK to
accept this color and then i'm going to
zoom in to get a better view of the I
now i'm going to select the brush tool
all and find the correct size for the
brush by using the bracket keys on the
keyboard and we can also change the
hardness of the brush by holding down
the shift key while pressing the bracket
keys i'm gonna rain to get the brush
around about a quarter of the diameter
of the eye and slightly soft and if
you'd rather not use the keyboard
shortcuts and you can change the brush
settings up here by clicking on this
little arrow and then you've got all
your various settings inside this dialog
box
okay we're all set i'm going to start
painting away on the I just trying to
keep as accurate as i can and don't
worry about the highlights in the middle
we're just going to paint over the
entire thing at the moment and that
looks pretty good now for the final
touch I'm going to change the blend mode
of the liar from normal over here in the
layers palette to color which is going
to maintain the hue and saturation
values of the paint with added that
makes them with the luminosity values of
the original photograph which you can
see gives us a very realistic effect now
I'm just going to zoom in or our should
say to see both thighs together and then
just lower the opacity of the right I
until it starts matching the iris of the
original I and just about their looks
pretty good
ok so let's go back to the left eye and
take another look at that i'm going to
create another layer in the layers
palette and rename it left I now I've
still got the brush selected so i'm
going to zoom into the left eye and
start painting away on the eyeball once
again there's no need to go into the
Irish this time by the way because
that's already looking fine we've got no
redness in that section of the photo
ok so once again i'm going to zoom out
such and change the blend mode of the
layer to color and then i'm going to
lower the opacity until we lose the
green tinge and if we start getting
traces of redness again then we know
we've gone too far
somewhere in between is going to be just
about right
it ok just to finish things off if we
wanted to darken the pupils just a
little bit more we could duplicate the
background layer over here in the layers
palette and then just grab the burn tool
from over here in the tools palette make
sure that our burning is set to mid
tones and that we can afford to raise
the exposure by something like around
fifty percent which is usually pretty
high and then just brush away once or
twice in the pupil too dark and things
up and that's looking pretty good
okay i'm going to zoom out this image
once again and I'm going to alt delete
the background layer to show you the
original image and then click again to
show you the repaired image i'm going to
zoom in a bit here so we can see better
what's going on and i'm going to click
to see before-and-after so once again
take a look at the difference this is
before and this is after well I hope you
found this tutorial on free
photoshop.com to be helpful thanks very
much for watching
Video Length: 08:05
Uploaded By: Matt Whiting
Published: 6/11/2007
View Count: 41,453