It’s all about the eyes…
The eyes define a person. They are windows into that person’s soul. The eyes are one of, if not the single most, important parts of a portrait photograph. It is the first feature noticed. It is also one place where a little post-processing can really make a portrait shine. In this article I’m going to cover the steps I use to make normal eyes into eyes that will take your client’s breath away (without taking away his or her soul).
In this article I will be using Photoshop CS2 to do all my photographic processing. Everything I do here, though, should be possible in most photo-processing applications. I also strongly recommend using a Wacom graphics tablet when doing this kind of work. The pressure sensitive pen on the Wacom tablets is a lifesaver when performing delicate adjustments on an image.
In my Photoshop environment I have several tool presets defined that I use for many of the processes that I will be describing. Using tool presets is much more efficient than constantly changing the tool parameters as the image is fine tuned. In the text that follows I’ll point out which tools I have saved as a presets.
If you do not have a Wacom tablet and must use a mouse, set the flow control on the brush to a low number and make multiple passes with the brush to build up the change a little bit at a time. This is the simplest way of simulating the pressure sesitivity of the tablet.
As much as possible I do all the eye work on several separate layers that will allow me to go back and adjust them at a later time.
The image I’ll be using in this article is shown below. It’s not a bad image to start with, but I think the eyes could be better.
Here is a crop of the original image showing just the area around the eyes that we’ll be working on in this session:
Before beginning the general cleanup, I make a copy of the background layer. The general cleanup will be done on this copy, leaving the original image untouched. Once I’m satisfied with the general cleanup, I can collapse the two layers into a cleaned up background layer.
Remove stray hairs: You can see in the original image that there are several stray hairs that should be removed. Especially the ones that go right through the eye. Use the spot-healing brush and/or the clone stamp to remove stray hairs. I tend to prefer the clone stamp over the healing brush because I feel like I have a bit more control. For the clone stamp I set the opacity to 100%, the flow to 50%, the brush hardness to 70%, and turn on the airbrush. In the brushes palette I turn on the “other dynamics” check box and set the flow jitter property to “pen pressure”. Now it is a simple matter of selecting a source area (by alt-clicking) that is similar to the background where the stray hairs lay and “painting” out the stray hairs.
This clone stamp configuration is saved as my “General Cleanup Cloner” preset. The preset also saves the clone stamp size, but I will adjust the size to fit the task by using one of the touch strips on my Wacom Intuos tablet.
Fix makeup: Use the general cleanup cloner (or the spot healing brush) to clean up any makeup debris and to repair any makeup mistakes.
Reduce wrinkles: The general cleanup cloner works well for reducing wrinkles. While the spot healer will eliminate wrinkles, this can come across looking unnatural in the image. By just reducing the wrinkle a little bit a natural look is maintained. To reduce the wrinkle I just select a source area near the wrinkle and brush over the wrinkle with a few strokes until the wrinkle starts to fade away.
Remove unwanted blemishes and bags: Most people will have some degree of bags under the eyes. Since, in most cases, I am trying to create a flattering portrait of the client, I will reduce or eliminate the bags under the eyes. Again, I use my general cleanup cloner to do this. I chose a larger brush size and select the source area from the cheek region just below the bags. Then just brush over the bags with a few strokes until the bags disappear.
Add some sharpening: In the image I’m using for this article, the right eye is not in perfect focus because I did not allow enough depth of field. I will use the unsharp mask to enhance the sharpness of this eye. To do this, I’ll use the round marquee selector to select just the are around the eye. Then I’ll feather the selection so we don’t see an abrupt change in sharpness between the selected and unselected area. I usually use a feather radius of 10% of the selection size. For the unsharp parameters, start with an amount of 150%, a radius of 1.4, and a threshold of 3. Adjust to taste.
Remove unwanted non-primary catch lights: Most studio shots will be using a primary (key) and a secondary (fill) light source. The secondary light source can be a strobe or a reflector. In either case this secondary light source can show up as a second catch light in the subjects eye. You can see this in the original image. These secondary catch lights should be removed in order to restore the more natural look of a single light source. To do this I use a soft edge brush sized small enough to work around the primary catch lights. The color is set to black, opacity to 100%, flow to 80%, airbrush is turned on. I saved this brush configuration to a preset called Pupil Brush. Now just apply brush strokes over the pupil area that should be black.
Here is a roll-over picture showing the original and the cleanup up version of the eyes:
Brighten the whites: Sometime your subjects eyes are not a white as they would like. This is you opportunity to make them happy. Don’t go overboard. Eyes that are too white look unreal.
First create a new blank layer by clicking on the “new layer” button on the layer palette. Name the new layer “Whites of the eyes”. Make sure the new layer is selected. Select the paint brush tool, set opacity to 35%, flow to 100%, airbrush on, hardness to 0%. Make sure the brush dynamics are configured to adjust the flow with pen pressure. This brush is saved as a preset called “White eyes”. Use the eye dropper tool to select a color from the whitest part of the eye, then change the color by increasing the lightness until it is almost, but not quite white. This is the color to use to paint the whiter eyes. Now, using this brush preset, apply strokes around the whites of the eyes to slowly brighten them. Note that using an opacity of only 35% help maintain the natural look and prevent removing of the small blood vessels. If there is excessive redness in the eyes, I’ll just keep painting until the redness fades to an acceptable level.
The rollever image below show the whites of the eyes before and after:
Lighten the iris color: Lightening the iris color helps to show off the color of the yes without changing the color. It helps to separate the iris from the pupil. Create a new layer from the Layer|New.. menu. In the new layer dialog box set the mode to overlay, opacity to 100%, and check the “Fill with Overlay-neutral color (50% gray)” check box. Name the new layer “Irises”.
Select the brush tool, select the foreground color as white, set opacity to 30%, flow to 50%. Set the brush size to be about the width of the pupil ring and the hardness to 0%.
Make sure the Irises layer is selected, then paint around the iris ring with the brush. After a few strokes around the ring the irises will begin to lighten. Again, moderation is the key. You can toggle to visibility of the Irises layer on and off to see the effect. You can also use the layer opacity control to reduce the effect.
Separate the iris from the whites: To do this I simply darken the border between the iris and the whites of the eyes. This can be done on the same Irises layer that was just created. This time the brush color is changed from white to black and the size is set quite small. Just apply a brush stroke along the border between the iris and the white. The black brush on the overlay layer will darken whatever lay beneath it.
The rollover image below shows the before and after enhancing the iris:
Clean or replace the catch lights: The catch lights in the cleanup up image still aren’t ideal. I prefer clean round catch lights that don’t show the structure of the light being used (in this case an umbrella). The two catch lights also aren’t as well balanced as I would have liked. For this image I’m simply going to paint over the real catch lights with a small soft white brush. First I create a new blank layer called “Catch Lights” at the top of my layer stack. Then using the small soft white brush I just dab in the center of the existing catch lights. The harder I press the pen stylus, the more white is deposited. I don’t press very hard because I don’t want solid white dots. I want white catch lights that are defined, but soft.
The rollover image below show the before and after effect of enhancing the catch lights:
Add emphasis opposite the catch light: The irises of the eyes also show a slight brightening just opposite of the catch lights. I like to emphasize this brightening a bit. These highlights are sometimes referred to as iris moons because of their crescent shape on the iris. I use an overlay layer just like I did to lighten the iris color. I create a new overlay layer and call it “Iris moons”. Select a soft white brush with 100% opacity, and 25% flow. Then paint small crescent shaped highlights just opposite of the catch lights. The moon highlights should span maybe 30 to 45 degrees.
Here is the rollover image showing the addition of the moon highlights:
Eyebrows & Eyelashes: The last thing I address with the eyes are the eyelashes and eyebrows. This is usually limited to darkening both a little bit to help make them pop against the skin. Again, I use a new overlay layer called “Eyelashes” and a very small (2 pixels) black brush set to an opacity of 100% and a flow of 25%. I then just hand paint each eyelash darkening it a bit against the back ground. I also recreate any missing eyelashes by painting them in with the same brush. Do the same thing with the eyebrows (but use a larger brush that just about covers the brow. Adjust the layer opacity when you are done to decrease the effect if it is too strong.
Here is the rollover image showing the enhanced eyelashes and eyeborws:
That about wraps up my process for cleaning up the eyes in a photograph. Here’s the final rollover showing the original image and the finished enhanced image:
Here’s the full photograph with the cleaned up eyes:
I hope that you found this tutorial useful. If you have different techniques please tell about them in the comments.
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