Fixing Glowing Dog Eyes

[rpcrowe]

I don't have much experience "fixing" the glowing green/blue eyes in flash pictures of dogs since I always shoot bounced flash. I realize that the "best" way to fix "glowing eyes" is to prevent them in the first place by either bouncing or shooting with off camera flash...

However, lately, I am being tasked to "fix" pictures of our American Maltese Rescue dogs that have ben sent to me from foster homes all over the United States. Many of these have been shot either with P&S cameras or with DSLR camera using onboard flash. I need to "fix" the images for posting on www.petfinder.com; the nationwide pet rescue website. Gowing eyes look terrible and the best I can get our dogs to look, the better chance that they will have to draw interest from prospective adoptive families...

I could not find any shots sent to me from fosters which had glowing eyes since I erase the shots after fixing them, so I used my onboard flash to shoot a sample of what I am talking about...



The Photoshop Elements red Eye Fix doesn't work. I originally tried using the Clone Tool to clone in a black spot from somewhere else in the image but that looke terrible. My final fix is to use the Burn Tool with the aim circle right about the same size as the "glow" in the eye. This seems to work fairly well as illustrated below...



However, if anyone else has any other ideas, I'd love to learn about how they fix this problem...

By the way, it is unreasonable to ask the volunteer fosters to get equipment in which the flash can be used off camera or bounced. Shooting outdoors or indoors lit by window light would also work to prevent the glowing eyes but, I have to make do with what I get. It is hard enough to find fosters and I don't want to alienate anyone by micro-managing their photos....

[Trina]

Hi Richard,
I call them demon eyes lol... here is one of my beasts I fixed.. if you like it I will post directions when I get back from town... its a bit fussy but I like the effect:>
Tucker and Gus before


After

I need more practice on the catchlights...

[rpcrowe]

I like it quite a bit... Thanks...

[Trina]

Ok here it is...

I liked your idea of burning the pupil and did that before I did this.. seemed to me like it gave it some depth... the opacity was 53% using a soft brush that barely covered the pupils, I did not want to cover the pupil just tone it down a bit.

Correcting pet eyes For Photoshop and will work in PSE as well

Work on a duplicate of original photo

Zoom in on the eyes.

Select your magic wand tool and adjust it to just fit over the pupil and select, (make sure to have it set on “add to selection”) do both eyes at once if you need to work on both eyes.

Then got to Select>Modify>Expand and set the pixels to one pixel and click ok.

Click Ctrl+J to send the pupils up a layer, name layer pupils.

Resect the circles by clicking CTRL+ clicking on the thumbnail in the layer panel, this will give you marching ant around the pupils again.

Make sure your color chips are in the default setting black over white, and click on Alt+Backspace, this will fill your iris’s with black. CTRL+D to deselect.

Now reduce the opacity of the pupil to 78-82 % or until your happy with it:>

Add a new layer and name catchlights, select a #5 hard brush, select the color white, mode normal, 100% opacity. Insert 3 catch lights. You can play with the opacity on this some to get it how you like it as well…

HTH:>

[ggt]

Wow Trina --That probably works better than what I do. I'll have to try it.

I always just zoom way in an paint each picture with the paint brush at a reduced opacity, with black or a very dark gray-depending on the shot. Then I paint over with white for the reflection. Sometimes I have to work with the iris too if if has reflection from the red/glow on it.

[Trina]

Gretchen that is how I first learned to do the eyes, but this way with the magic wand it gets the shape perfectly... so if like the little dog above the green pupil is at the top its just a bit easier to fill in:> I also tend to do a quick dodge around the iris. It doesn't take to long once you have done it once or twice... I played with Richards picture and found that because the one pupil was SO much brighter that burning it to where the two pupils looked about the same really helped when trying to working with the opacity of the black.

Here is what I came up with... Richard I will remove this if you wish me to:>

[rpcrowe]

Trina, great job... Please don't remove the image... And, thank you!

[ggt]

Trina, I printed out your technique and wil be trying it. thanks for posting it!