Red eye is caused by a reflection of the camera flash in the subject’s retina. You’ll see it more often when taking pictures in a darkened room because the subject’s iris is wide open. To avoid red eye, use the camera’s red eye reduction feature. Or, better yet, use a separate flash unit that you can mount on the camera farther away from the camera’s lens.
Remove red eye
The Red Eye tool removes red eye in flash photos of people or animals.- In
RGB Color mode, select the Red Eye tool
. (The Red Eye tool is in the same group
as the Spot Healing Brush tool 
. Hold down a tool to display additional
tools in the group.) - 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.
Fix Red Eye
in Photoshop
1.
Open
the image.
2.
Go to
Image > Duplicate and close the original.
3.
In
Photoshop 6 or earlier, go to View > New View. In Photoshop 7 go to Window
> Documents > New Window. This will open a duplicate window of the same
image.
4.
Zoom
one of the windows so that you can see the eyes as large as possible. Set the
other window view to 100%.
5.
Arrange
the two windows so you can see both the zoomed view and the 100% view at the
same time.
6.
Create
a new layer.
7.
Use
the eyedropper to pick up a color from the iris of the eye. It should be a fairly
gray tint with a hint of the eye color.
8.
Paint
over the red part of the eye on the new layer, being careful not to paint over
the eyelids.
9.
Go to
Filters > Blur > Gaussian and give it about a 1 pixel blur to soften the
edges.
10.
Set
the layer blend mode to Saturation. This will take the red out without removing
the highlights, but in many cases it leaves the eyes too gray and hollow
looking.
11.
If
that's the case, duplicate the saturation layer and change the blend mode to
Hue. That should put some color back in while still preserving the highlights.
12.
If the
color is too strong after adding a Hue layer, lower the opacity of the Hue
layer.
13.
When
you're happy with the results you can merge the extra layers down.
Tips:
1.
If you
need to darken the pupil area, use the burn tool. It should only take a couple
of taps with the burn tool to darken the pupils.
2.
Before
merging your layers, use the eraser tool to clean up any overspray from
painting outsideof the iris.
Fix Red Eye
in Photoshop Elements
1.
Open
the photo.
2.
Go to
View > New View to open a duplicate window.
3.
Zoom
in on one window so you can see the eyes and arrange the Windows you can see
both the zoomed in view and the actual size view.
4.
If the
layers palette is not visible, display it by going to Window > Show Layers.
5.
Click
the "create a new layer" button at the bottom of the layers palette.
6.
At the
top of the layers palette, use the blending mode menu to change this new
layer's blending mode to Color.
7.
Click
the foreground color swatch in the tool box and select the replacement eye
color.
8.
Select
the paintbrush tool.
9.
In the
options bar, choose a soft-edged brush, slightly smaller than the red eye area.
Click on opacity and set it low, to about 30%.
10.
Gradually
paint over the red area in the eyes, being careful not to paint over the white
of the eyes or the skin around the eyes. Zoom in closer if you need more
control.
Tips:
1.
Because
we use a low opacity brush, you will probably need to build up the color in
several passes. Every time you release and press the mouse button, you will
build up more color.
2.
If you
overdo it, you can use the opacity slider on the layer palette to reduce the
color.
3.
If you
accidentally paint outside of the iris area, it's easy to clean up because
you're on a separate layer. Just use the eraser tool to remove any stray color,
or trash the layer and try again.
4.
When
you're happy with the results you can merge the layer down or flatten the image
from the Layer menu
