TIP OF THE WEEK
Fixing Red Eye - By Tim Grey - Tim Grey Digital Dark Room
The first step is to create a layer that will allow you to fix the color problem, specifically the red that should not appear in the pupil of the eye. Start by creating a new empty image layer by clicking on the Create a New Layer button (it has a blank sheet of paper icon on it) at the bottom of the Layers palette, and change the Blend Mode to Color with the dropdown at the top-left of the Layers palette. Select the Brush tool from the Tools palette, and from the Brush dropdown on the Options bar select a normal round brush and set the Hardness to 0%. Zoom in on the eye area, and use the left and right square bracket keys ("[" and "]") to reduce and enlarge the size of the brush, respectively, so the brush is about the same size as the pupil. Press "D" to set the colors to the default values of black and white, making sure black is the foreground color (press "X" to exchange foreground and background colors if necessary to make black the foreground color). Click on the pupil of the eye, possibly clicking a few times to eliminate the red color.
Chances are the pupil is now a bit too light, so the next step is to darken it up a bit. Create another new layer on the Layers palette, and this time change the Mode to Overlay. With the same Brush tool and basic settings, including black as the foreground color, change the Opacity setting on the Options bar to around 20%, and then click again on the pupil. You may need to click a few times to darken up the pupil enough. Be sure to zoom out a bit to get a better perspective on the actual effect.
If the entire iris is also getting changed to black, there's a good chance you're simply selecting too large an area for the Red Eye tool, and need to instead select only the pupil so the red color cast there can be neutralized without affecting the iris. However, I find that the Red Eye tool more often than not doesn't quite affect the correct area, so I don't even bother trying and instead use a manual method that -- while a bit more involved -- produces better results.
Repeat this process for all of the eyes in the image that need to be fixed. Switch to the Color layer to fix the red color, and the Overlay layer to darken the pupil. Note that if the iris needs a bit of color correction, you can click the foreground color on the Tools palette and then select a new color. Simply paint with that color on the Color layer you created to change the color of the iris as desired, without altering the texture.
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