Getting Rid of Red Eye

The photos you took of the party are reallyautomatically in real time.3. Create a new layer.4.
great - except for one thing: "red eye" makesUse the Eyedropper Tool to pick a colour from
everyone look like extras from a low budgetthe iris of the eye - this will be fairly grey, with
horror movie! Red eye can be a real problem ifjust a hint of the eye colour. Take the sample
you're taking photos with a flash. It's caused byfrom as near to the red area as you can without
the reaction of light from the flash on the innerpicking up any of the reddish tint.5. In the new
workings of your eye. Pictures of animalslayer, paint over the red area with this colour. Try
(especially cats) can suffer from a similar conditionvarious tools (brushes, pencils, Paint Bucket Tool,
know as "pet eye".Photoshop offers a solution toetc.) to achieve the desired effect. You'll have to
this problem, and while it can't make things lookexperiment and see which one works best for
exactly the way they should have been, it canyou on each particular picture - a lot will depend
make the people (or pets) in your pictures lookon the photo's resolution. Be careful to avoid the
less "possessed".The first thing to do is upload"white of the eye" on pictures of people. Do small
your photos into your computer, or scan them inamounts at a time, that way you can easily undo
if you're working from prints, then follow theseanything that doesn't look right. If you paint over
simple steps.1. To keep your original safe, make athe pupil, use the Art History Brush to expose it
copy of it by going to Image > Duplicate. Renameagain, or the Burn Tool to paint it in if it was
the copy if you wish, then close the original.2.obscured in the first place.6. Go to Filters > Blur >
Open a duplicate window of the same image. DoGaussian Blur and give the layer a blur of one or
this by going to Window > Documents > Newtwo pixels to soften the edges.7. Now set the
Window in Photoshop 7, or View > New View inlayer blend mode to saturation. If this makes the
Photoshop 6 or earlier. Then zoom in on one ofeye look too dull or grey, duplicate the layer and
the windows so that an eye fills the window. Setchange the blend mode of this new layer to Hue.
the other window's magnification to 100%.This should put some of the colour back. If the
Arrange the windows so you can see them bothcolour looks too strong, change the opacity of the
at the same time. This will enable you to work inHue layer until it looks right.8. When you're happy
close-up, but still see what the finished picture willwith the results, merge the layers down, save
look like. As it is the same picture in bothyour work, and start again with the next
windows, the 100% view will be updatedeye.Shaun Pearce is a writer and video maker.