Enhance Eyes in Photoshop

It can be argued that amazing eyes are the cornerstone of a fantastic portrait.  If they look dull or dark, it makes it tough to connect with the subject.  On the other hand, bright, razor-sharp, saturated eyes can turn a dull portrait into one that pops.  Luckily, Photoshop makes it very easy to retouch and enhance eyes.  For example, you can:

• Change the color of someone’s eyes
• Enhance the depth of the eyes (by burning & dodging)
• Make eyes more colorful & vibrant
• Whiten eyes
• Remove red eye
• Remove or add catchlights

Plus much more.  Below is a sample of some of the good videos that very simply show you how to enhance and make your eyes look awesome in Photoshop.  The tutorials use several different versions of Photoshop, but primarily CS4.  In reality, it doesn’t make that much difference which version you are using.

Awesome Eyes in Photoshop

This is one of the the best tutorials about retouching eyes in Photoshop I’ve seen.  It demonstrates how to take dull, blue eyes and really make them pop.  He brightens the eyes using curves, enhances detail by dodging & burning around the iris & pupil, and finally saturates the eye a bit via the sponge tool.  The combination of all the work (in only 5 minutes) really makes a tremendous improvement.

Photoshop Tutorial: Eye Color

This tutorial shows how to use a radial gradient effect in a very realistic, professional way to add or change the color of someone’s eyes.  He takes a photo of a subject with pale green eyes, and colors the middle of her eye a light brown, and fades outward to a nice deep green color.  It’s a method of eye color enhancement that you don’t see too often, and it produces wonderful results.

Photoshop: Awesome Brown Eyes

This video extends the information from the first video listed (Awesome Eyes in Photoshop), but specifically for enhancing brown eyes.  He uses some of the same methods as in the first video (i.e. increasing detail by dodging & burning, curves to lighten the eye, etc), but shows some subtle differences you need to be aware of when working with brown eyes.

Portrait Makeover Part 1 – Whitening Teeth & Eyes

In this simple video tutorial, you’ll learn about a couple simple photo retouching techniques that are very popular: whitening teeth & eyes in Photoshop.  In a nutshell, you mask off or select the area you want to whiten, apply some careful dodging to the selection, and adjust the layer’s opacity if necessary.  Quick & effective, and the technique works for both eyes and teeth.

Photoshop Tutorial – Whitening the Eyes

Instead of using the dodge tool to lighten eyes, this tutorial demonstrates an alternate way to whiten eyes.  He makes a duplicate copy of the eyes, sets the blend mode to screen (to make all the pixels brighter), then paints a layer mask over the area to lighten.  If your finished result makes your subject appear to have glowing white alien eyes, you can just back the opacity off until it looks realistic.

Photoshop CS4: Red Eye Removal

This is a simple, & quick video that shows you how to remove red eyes in Photoshop CS4 using the Red Eye Removal Tool.  It’s a very simple tool to use, just select the tool (located in the same menu as the healing brush, spot healing brush, and patch tool), click the red in each eye, and voila!  The red eyes are gone.  There are a few options available when using the tool, but it does a great job by default.

That should give you some idea about how to retouch & enhance your subject’s eyes in Photoshop to make them look awesome. Changing eye color, whitening eyes, increasing detail, removing red eye, altering catchlights, and more is simple.

Please let me know what else you’d like to learn about and I’ll make a post about it.