Cure Redeye in Digital Images
By John Sweeney - 16th of January 2007
Cure Red-eye in Your Pictures with Photoshop:
You've all seen those programmes which sometimes come free with the purchase of a digital camera.
Their method of 'curing' red-eye is merely to click on the eye and hey presto a black or dark mark appears like a blob on the eye, that's the extent of what those programmes can do really, so, we need to be a little more creative and realistic, and, at least, make it look live we have done a good job, not just got rid of the red-eye but replaced it with something more realistic, if we do it well enough then no-one will know.
There are, of course, a number of ways to do the job in Photoshop, so I will lead you through the easiest and most direct way, if you have difficulty and cannot completely get rid of the red-eye with my described method then perhaps you need to consider painting the eye with the required colours, using the tools provided in Photoshop.
- Open the image containing the offending red-eye.
- Enlarge the area covering the eyes so that you can still see both eyes.
- Select the Elliptical marquee tool, (Top left hand tool on the toolbar).
- Make an elliptical selection round the iris of both eyes. To do this make sure that the 'add to' icon is selected on the contextual bar. (After you have selected the marquee tool a bar will appears below the menu bar in photoshop and the icon's should appear directly below the word Image on the menu-bar, just run your cursor over them to identify the icons.
- When you have selected the add to icon you will safely be able to put a circle round both eyes so that any later action you take will be the same for both eyes.
- Next, Open the Image menu, go to Adjustments and select Hue and Saturation.
- Then, a new box, called hue and saturation will appear. At the top of this box you will see the word edit and to the right of that the word master. This is a scroll down menu so scroll to RED, this means that you have selected the reds channel for changing, as that is the one affecting the eyes.
- Move the middle or saturation slide bar to the left to reduce the red in the eye, then slide the saturation bar to the right to introduce another colour, keep moving these slider's around until you have reached a point where you are satisfied with the result.
- When you have finished click ok on the pallet, you will still show the elliptical circles around the eyes, select Ctrl D, to de-select and the job is finished'
- Now you should have a red-eye free image, save it and move on to the next one. Good Luck.
