Fixing Red Eyes & Copying and Moving Selections

[KevinStecyk]

Originally Posted by Jerry Skrocki

Select the Red Eye tool . (The Red Eye tool is in the same group as the Spot Healing Brush tool . Click the triangle in the lower right portion of a tool to display additional tools.)
Click in the red eye. If you are not satisfied with the result, undo the correction, set one or more of the following options in the options bar, and click the red eye again:
Pupil Size Increases or decreases the area affected by the Red Eye tool.
Darken Amount Sets the darkness of the correction.

Hi Jerry,

I've tried PS's red eye tool previously and find that it often performs poorly. I was aware of the tool, but choose not to use it.

In fact, I just tried it on the photo I recently corrected. The channel method outlined above performed far, far superior.

Regards,
Kevin

[Johan_Elzenga]

Originally Posted by DougAxford

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. When you change Saturation it will not alter the black of the pupil, just change the iris to grey when the red is removed. The only time I ever have red eye is a shot of the Bride coming up the aisle of a very dark church. In that case, the colour of the eyes do not even show.

Red eyes are caused by the flash light reflecting off the small blood vessels in the retina, which means you get red pupils, not a red iris. Pupils need to be back. The color of the iris is not affected by flash light, so corrections for red eyes have nothing to do with changing the color of the iris.

[Dennis_Vied]

I didn't see it mentioned, but don't forget the catchlight. Many times when I have corrected red eye or done other work on the eyes, it will also take out the catchlight, so I add them in, and remember to place them on the correct part of the eye corresponding to where the main light is coming from.

I use the paint brush tool, and set the size to a pixel or two depending on the size of the image. Then I set the foreground color to white, (255, 255, 255), and place the catchlight at the correct point in the eyes. (Assuming the desired color is actually white, of course)

[Jerry Skrocki]

One of the advantages to using the quick select tool is that it excludes catchlights, only selecting adjacent pixels of a similar color.

[KevinStecyk]

Here's one of the two original eyes at 100% resolution:



Now, to that original eye, I used Photoshop's Red Eye Pupil Quick Select & Fix tool with the parameters Pupil Size 70% and Darken Amount 80%. I selected the entire pupil and a bit around the pupil when using the tool.



In this last instance, I took the original, made a selection slightly larger than the pupil and copied it to its own layer twice. So now we have original image of original eye on the bottom layer, and Layer1 of the pupil (pupil and a bit of iris) and an identical Layer2 of pupil.

To red channel of Layer2, I applied the green channel of Layer1.



To get this following result:



My channel method takes only seconds.

This photo was taken with a point and shoot with the flash on. The catchlight/flash burn remains intact, as it should. It will be 255 in the red and green channels.

You can judge which result you prefer. Perhaps using different settings would yield a better result with the Photoshop tool. Perhaps. But I am happy with the Channel method.