Fergus….
We all have different ways of tackling this. My prefered way is as follows:-
1. Make a selection around the pupils of each eye. Use either Eliptical Earquee or the Lasso selection tool, which ever you feel is easiest.
2. Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and move the Saturation slider to the left until your happy with the result.
Colin
I tend to do it this way:
Select the red area plus a few pixels … feather a little. 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.
It you want to do it on its own layer then after selecting the red area and feathering a little just do Edit>Copy then Edit>Paste … and continue with the rest.
Wendy
Here’s a way using the Paint Brush:
A. painting directly in image:
1. Set Foreground color to default black.
2. Zoom in to large eye.
3. Select Brush Tool with soft brush about size of pupil.
4. Set Brush mode to Color and paint over pupil.
B. painting on new layer:
1. Set Foreground color to default black.
2. Create new layer above image layer, set layer Mode to Color.
3. Zoom in to large eye.
4. Select Brush Tool with soft brush about size of pupil.
5. Set Brush mode to Normal and paint over pupil.
Thanks Colin, that does work, it’s a useful tip, I will try some others as well.
Fergus
Hi Wendy, I tried your tip but the Enhance>colour>hue & sat> button was greyed out no matter what I did, am I missing something simple?
Fergus
Hi Fergus,
It shouldn’t be greyed out …
Try something for me:
Open up a new document (File>New)
any size will do but make sure it is RGB
Choose any colour and using the paint bucket colour the layer Now do Enhance>colour> Hue & Sat
Is it still greyed out?
Wendy
Doesn’t Elements 3 have a red eye tool? I know both Album 2 and Elements 2 have one. They work pretty well most of the time.
Yes, Elements 3 does have a red eye tool. In my opinion it is better than the Album 2 red Eye, which was better than the Elements 3 red eye.
One technique I found in Elements 3 is to do each eye separately; I think some material says you can do both at once – but I found that more likely to fail.
Barb O
Oh I do agree with that …
Each eye can be so different and trying to do them both at the same time just means that you compromise and neither are good.
Wendy
Hi Wendy,
Open up a new document (File>New)
any size will do but make sure it is RGB
Choose any colour and using the paint bucket colour the layer Now do Enhance>colour> Hue & Sat
Is it still greyed out?
that worked fine, it’s a good tip; I have compared the results of several experiments and it seems to me that the red eye tool in Elements V3.0 is as good as I can get. It is better to do each eye separately. I played around with selecting a non red eye from a good photo and inserting it into a red eye photo (of the same person); it worked but I need to play around more with it to get it right.
regards,
Fergus
This is slightly OT, but I’ll forge ahead …
I am a big believer in "prevention is better than cure". This is a very important attitude in digital photography, as the initial data captured is critical to the whole process. So, while knowing how to clean up red-eye is good, knowing how to prevent it is better. Here are my suggestions:
1) Consider not using flash. It is very easy to get into the habit of leaving the camera in automatic flash mode. Often there is enough light for modern cameras to cope without a flash. This is great for candids, of course.
2) Ask you subject to not look directly at the camera. Try a line like "look at this invisible parrot on my shoulder".
3) If your camera supports it, get an external flash unit, which need not be expensive. This will move the flash away from the lens. The further away it is, the less red-eye you will get.
4) Carrying on from (3), if the external unit has bounce-flash capability, use it. This will also provide better quality of lighting. The idea is to point the flash upwards, so that the light is bounced of the ceiling etc. and evened out. Ideally, such a flash unit should be "smart" – be able to communicate with the camera to sort out exposure.
