Post processing part 4 – Dazzling eyes

To me, the eyes are probably the most important part of a portrait shot. Ask me again after loads more experience and I’ll have probably changed mind. But for now, it’s the eyes. Unlike the post processing for skin, you can go a little wild with the irises.

This person already has great eyes – there is no need for any work. But I will go through the steps that I carry out when I want to add some extra punch to the eyes.

Just like for when doing the skin, I create a new layer group, and call it “eyes”.

Create a eyes layer group

Spot correction

“Spot correction for eyes?!” Yes, because there are often numerous catch lights in the eyes and I prefer them with just one well defined catch light. So if there are numerous catch lights, I clean them up in the same way as for skin.

I create a new layer, rename it to “spots” (I could perhaps call it “catch lights” but I as I said before, am such a lazy typist :)

Create a new layer

On this layer I make whatever corrections I need to. Mostly this is removing additional catching lights.

Eye whites

The white of an eye is not pure white! So I don’t make them pure white. But if the person has been awake all night (like me) having fun in Edinburgh (not like me, I’m stuck in front of a computer screen) then their eyes might be a little bloodshot (like mine).

Firstly, I select the eye whites, then save the selection and next very slightly feather (Sift-F6, menu Select, Modify, Feather) it, perhaps 2px.

Select the eye whites

Then I create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer

I rename the new layer to “eye whites”. Notice that this adjustment layer is not clipped to the layer below – there is no small downward pointing arrow in the icons for the layer. This is because I want the adjustment to be applied to all layers below, specifically the background layer, and not just to the layer immediately below. To toggle the “Clip to layer below”, use the button shown below.

Also, below are the two adjustments that are made. First, I reduce the saturations of the red, making any bloodshot eye whites greyer. Then I increase the master lightness to make them a little whiter. Care must be taken to not go overboard and give the person glow in the dark eye whites – these adjustments are usually very small (unlike I’ve shown here). Of course, I can always lower the power of the effect by reducing the layer opacity.

Desaturate the red and lighten it all

Irises

This where some fun and some fairly wild effects can be applied. There are numerous ways to make the irises really pop, but I tend to use just either levels adjustment or dodge/burn, sometimes I use both. There’s another method that involves painting and blending that I’ll describe, though I’ve not really had much success with it I’ll describe it because it a quite a different process – perhaps it’ll work better for you than it has for me. Methods similar to levels adjustment that also produce a pretty good effect and are worth trying out are Curves, Hue/Saturation or Brightness/Contrast adjustment layers.

Irises – levels adjustments

This adjustment is just for the irises, so I start out by making a selection of the irises (and of course, saving that selection), then some very fine feathering of just a few pixels. If the black pupil is reflecting some colour, I usually exclude that from the selection – I don’t want to make the pupil reflection more vibrant (except once when there was a very good silhouette of me taking the shot!).

Levels adjustments are very good for someone who has eyes in one of the adjustment channel colours – green, blue or red (ok, maybe not red). For other colours, I tend to increase saturation and brightness a curves adjustment, but it is a little trickier.

Select the irises

Create a Levels adjustment layer.

Create a Levels adjustment layer

For a Levels adjustment on blue or green eyes, simply reducing the brightness of the appropriate channel is usually enough – reduce blue channel brightness for blue eyes, green channel brightness for green eyes. Below, is the change that I would make for blue eyes, as well as the equivalent for a Curves adjustment.

Typical Levels adjustment for blue eyes (and equivalent Curves adjustment)

But this was not the effect I used for this gentleman’s irises.

Irises – dodge/burn

By dodging (lightening) and burning (darkening) the irises, I often manually draw in a slight effect to make the eyes stand out.

Dodging and burning can be carried out directly on the image, but I prefer to do such changes on a layer. That way I have the freedom adjust the effect, particularly in this case, the blending mode. So this almost starts out like most operations by creating a new layer, but this layer is created in a different way. Either hold down the Alt key at same time as clicking the “Create a new layer” button, or use the menu Layer > New > Layer…, or press Shift+Ctrl+N. This will open a dialog box to giving very useful options.

Creating the Dodge/Burn layer

I give the layer a name, and set the Mode to Overlay, and tick the “Fill with Overlay-neutral colour (50% gray)” option. This creates a grey layer that has no effect – my dodging and burning later will produce the effect that I want.

The new layer

Then I use the Dodge/Burn tool on this layer. Where the “burn” is applied to layer, the image gets darker. Similarly, when the “dodge” is drawn on this layer, the image gets lighter. While dodging and burning, I make sure that the exposure is set to something low, like 20% so that I can more carefully apply the effect,and I only use Midtones (the others have next to no effect). Like all eye changes, subtlety is the key!

What to dodge and burn? I could just say “Wherever is best” but there is a pretty good guide that I always follow – I darken the outside third of the iris, and lighten the inside third. Then I apply any extra little bits of dodging and burning as I see neccessary.

Darken the outer iris, lighten the inner iris

Finally, I change the layer blending mode from Overlay to Soft Light (to more exaggerate the effect) or to Hard Light (to extremely exaggerate it) to see how it looks. The effect can always be toned by by reducing the layer opacity.

Again, this was not the effect I used for this gentleman’s irises.

Irises – paint and blend

This is the quickest and probably easiest method on it’s own, but I usually find that it’s not enough on it’s on. In particular, the irises get darkened and so there is usually some extra work to do afterwards. Because of this, I very rarely use this method.

I use the Eye Dropper (keyboard I) to select the iris colour. Then I create a new layer, and use the Brush to paint the iris colour over the irises.

Paint the irises with the iris colour

After that, it’s just a simple matter of changing the blending mode from Normal – Soft Light is usually best but Overlay and Hard Light can also be good. Finally, lowering the opacity of the layer can make it look a lot less outlandish. A little selective erasing with a low flow and it’s done – easy, fast.

And even this was not the effect I used for this gentleman’s irises.

Irises – so what did I do?

H’s eyes were already brilliant. I initially did nothing to them, but in the end, I added an Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and increased the saturation just a fraction. It’s just enough to add a little more of the wonderful dark golden colour in his eyes.

Phew, that’s the eyes done!

Post process series

Post processing part 1 – What post processing?
Post processing part 2 – The shot
Post processing part 3 – Nice skin
Post processing part 4 – Dazzling eyes (soon)
Post processing part 5 – Brilliant hair
Post processing part 6 – Cool clothes (soon)
Post processing part 7 – Final tweaks (soon)

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