Removal of "red-eye" in
Photoshop using the Colour Replacement tool
"Red eye" in pictures of people or
often "green eye" in animals is an all too familiar phenomenon
where on-camera flash has been used.
The effect is caused by light being reflected
off of the retina at the back of the eye when the pupils are dilated
(wide open) in low light levels. It is not usually a problem when
light levels are normal as the pupils are not so dilated.
It is best to prevent red eye
by using off-camera flash or bouncing the flash off of a ceiling by
swiveling the flash head upwards, or using a diffuser such as a Stofen
Omnibounce or Lumiquest Pocket Bouncer (pictured below). Both these
manufacturers have websites.
Adobe Photoshop gives you a simple
way to fix red-eye using the Colour Replacement tool. In this tutorial,
you'll learn how to use the tool to fix red-eye in just a few steps.
1. Open your image.
Open the image that you want to repair. Zoom
in using the magnifying glass tool so you can easily see the red eyes
that need to be fixed. Then, select the Color Replacement tool (located
in the toolbox with the Healing Brush and Patch tool).
2. Choose a brush.
Choose a brush tip from the options bar. The
brush tip should be smaller than the red area of the eye to make correcting
the red-eye easier. Use the square bracket keyboard keys to increase/decrease
brush size.
3. Set options for the Color Replacement tool.
In the options bar, you can choose settings
that help you fix red-eye. For Mode, make sure that Color is selected.
For the Sampling option, choose Once to erase only areas containing
the color that you target. For the Limits option, select Discontinuous
to replace the sampled color wherever it occurs under the brush. Drag
the Tolerance slider to a low value (around 30 percent) to replace
only the few colors very similar to the pixels you click.
4. Choose a color to replace the red.
Typically, black is a good choice, but you
could try other colors to more closely resemble a person's eye color.
To choose a color, click the foreground color swatch in the toolbox.
In the color picker, choose a color that looks right, and then click
OK.
5. Repair your image.
Click once on the color you want to replace
in the image. Drag over the red with black to repair the image. If
all the red isn't removed, try increasing the Tolerance level in the
options bar to correct more shades of red.
Once you're happy with the correction, save
your image - job done