Terry,
Most of us don’t use the Red Eye tool as it tends to go from red to a sort of grey… which doesn’t look realistic. The method I use is:
Select the red area plus a few pixels … feather a little. Make a new layer … and do each eye on a separate layer. Enhance>colour>hue & sat> … select red from the edit box and reduce saturation to zero or thereabouts
Enhance>Brightness & contrast>levels .. move the left hand marker in about a third of the way and move the centre marker over to the right until the area goes dark … not too far or it will look artificial.
Wendy
Terry, when you say ‘target’, do you mean the replacement color? That’s selected by clicking on the Replacement color swatch in the Red-Eye tool toolbar. That opens up the color picker where you can select whatever color you want. The ‘current’ color is indeed the color that you hover over with the circle. Keep in mind that the replacement color really is a replacement hue that will be lighter or darker than the color in the swatch depending on the lightness of the image on which you’re painting; it won’t replace a light color with a dark color. Very confusing tool, in my opinion.
To add to Chuck’s post, note you have two options on the tool bar. First click and current color along with a tolerance setting. So, if you only want to affect a certain color use first click…click on color to be changed. Adjust tolerance as needed (low to affect a smaller range of color.) Current color changes whatever color is under the brush to the replacement color hue. I use this tool a lot to change colors of things for challenge entries. I tend to use other methods such as Wendy’s in one of the above posts because I don’t particularly care for gray eye which the brush has a tendancy to produce.
Terri
Terri, I’ve had a real hard time making the first click option only recolor the one picked; is there a trick to its use?
Chuck
Chuck, I pretty much paint with the red-eye brush. I have a stylus and tablet so if an area doesn’t change color due to luminosity or shadow I just tap to point sample. I usually paint at 45% or so if in a big area with a medium sized soft brush but lower the tolerance to the teens or low 20 switch to a smaller brush and paint around the edges…paying attention to the cross hairs because that is where the color is applied. I know not the magic answer you thought you were going to get. I just think it looks more natural than painting in many cases…well at least my painting…because it seems to not smother the texture and luminosity. For me it’s well simplier than creating artificial shadows and luminosity with dodge, burn, and sponge tools. I haven’t got to the point were I feel I have master these enough to dupe a photograph. I think a handful of people probably can …I’m not saying these techniques should be overlooked…just saying I haven’t reached that level of mastery so I utilize the red-eye brush as my handy dandy crutch tool. Since I don’t use it on red-eye, got to utilize that baby some how. Happy Easter!
Terri, thanks. I’ll be reading – and re-reading – your post and giving it a try on my (underutilized) tablet!
Happy Easter to you also!
Chuck
Chuck, I do have to hand it to you folks that can paint or make selections with any sort of accuracy with the mouse. Takes a bit of practice but once you get the hand eye coordination down these stylus tablets can really be handy if you enjoy doing creative projects. Don’t know how useful a person just doing photo retouching would find them.
Terru
