Digital Diversity

Its no wonder that the eyes are considered the window to the soul. They can give away your emotions and are, too many, a thing of beauty.

In the world of photography and Photoshop one of the most import things to do in a portrait shot is get the eyes in focus. The are instinctively the first thing we look at in a portrait shot, both of humans and animals. If you get the eyes out of focus it can ruin the shot. However if you get almost everything out of focus except the eyes the image can still work.

In this second portraiture tutorial I will go through 4 ways to help you retouch the eyes to make them really stand out using Photoshop.

Lightening the eyes

This is the method by which you simply lighten the eyes but keep a natural appearance.

Create a new layer above your image layer. Select the brush tool and give it a hardness of 0%. Choose a brush size that is the same size as the eyes themselves. Select white and click once over each eye.

With the new layer still selected change the blend mode to Overlay. You will notice the white brush marks now blend in with the image layer below it and the eyes are much brighter.

Finally, adjust the opacity of the layer to get the lightness you want. Its as simple as that.

Changing the eye colour

Add a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer above your image layer using Layer > New adjustment layer > Hue saturation. Now select the mask (the white box on the right) and press Ctr + I to make it all black. With the mask still selected, paint white over the eyes. You can hold the Alt key and click on the mask to see it displayed on your page like it is below.

Click on the adjustment layer symbol or any other layer to bring the image back. With the saturation adjustment layer selected, tick the Colorize box in the adjustments window. Move the Hue slider left and right and you will see the eyes change colour.

Once you have selected the colour try changing the adjustment layers blend mode. You may find normal gives the result you want but also try Overlay and soft light. I found overlay worked best for this image.

With the blend mode selected try adjusting the Hue, Saturation and lightness sliders and you should be able to make the eyes what ever colour you wish.

Hazel

Green

Blue

Eye pop

You can really bring out the eyes by using the selective colour technique on them.

Make the image black and white by adding a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer – Layer > New adjustment layer > Hue / Saturation. Then simply drag the saturation slider all the way to the left and the image will turn black and white.

Select the mask on the adjustment layer and paint black over the eyes. You will notice they become colour again.

Already you can see your attention is taken straight to the eyes and they now really stand out.

You can now make them stand out even more by using the eye colouring method above. Give them a colour that works best with the image.

Catch lights

Catch lights are simply the reflection of light normally caused by a flash or bright daylight. These normally add to the image and help make the eyes stand out.

Sometimes you will find that your portrait shots don’t have any catch lights so you may want to add some in manually using Photoshop.

Create a new layer above your image layer. Then using a small white soft brush click where you want the catch lights to be. Make sure they are in the same position on both eyes.

Change the blend mode of the new layer to soft light. This will blend the catch lights in with the natural eye colour and texture.

Keep making duplicates of this layer until you have strong enough catch lights. I found 3 of these layers gave me the right strength.

You portrait shot now has 2 natural looking catch lights.

Catch lights are not always round so try different brush shapes to get the desired result.

If your portrait shot already has catch lights but you don’t think they are prominent enough, you can brighten them up with the dodge tool. Just select the dodge tool, choose a brush size that is the same size as the catch lights them selves, select a low strength of about 5-10% and then click a few times to brighten them up.

Tags: adjustment layers, advanced editing, colour correction, colour pop, colours, elements, eyes, highlights, hue, masking, masks, photo editing, photography, photoshop, portrait, saturation, selective black and white, selective colour, thoughts, tutorial, tutorials

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 16:02 and is filed under photography, photoshop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.