Retouching Eyes part 2

This is part two of my tutorial on retouching eyes in Photoshop. Check out Part one

Step 11

Now it is time to deal with the eye’s iris. Use the “Elliptical Marquee Tool” (which you will find in the Tools palette) and drag a selection around each iris. Just like when you have selected the eyes, hold down the Shift key not to lose the first selection.



Step 12

You might not select only the iris when using the elliptical marquee tool, but also some parts above or below then. Switch back to selecting the Lasso tool and holding down the Alt key, drag around each area you did not want to select (by holding the “Alt” key, you will be using the “Subtract from selection” option). You will see that each time you release the mouse button, the respective part of the selection will disappear.

Step 13

At this point you will only have the irises selected. You need now to copy the iris in the both eyes to a new layer. But before this, you should soften the selection. Go to the “Select” menu found at the top of the screen and chose “Feather”.

Step 14

In the “Feather” dialog box, enter a value of around 5 pixels and press “OK”. Click next on the “Background layer” (select it from the Layers palette). Press Atrl+Alt+J on the keyboard to copy the selection onto a new layer above the “Background” layer. Rename the new layer “dodge”.

Step 15

You will applying an Unsharp Mask filter to the “dodge” layer. Make sure you have the “dodge” layer selected and go to the “Filter” menu at the top of the Photoshop main window and select “Sharpen” and then “Unsharp Mask”. Use an “Amount” value of 500%, a “Radius” value of 2 pixels and a “Threshold” value of 4 levels.

Step 16

Because after all these settings are done, the “dodge” layer’s sharpening is too strong, reduce it to 50%.

Step 17

You will now add a highlight in the lower right corner of each iris. Use the “Dodge” tool (select it from the Tools palette or press the O key). At the top of the screen you will see the “Options bar”. Modify the “Range” value to “Highlights” and the “Exposure” value to 50%.

Step 18

Select a small soft-edged brush (its size should be around 10 pixels, again, depending on your picture’s size). Paint a few strokes in the bottom right part of the iris. You will see that with each stroke you increase the amount of highlight applied to that area. Be careful not to exaggerate, especially is there was some highlight in the iris to start with.

Step 19

Select the “dodge” layer from the Layers palette. Hold the “Alt” key and click the “New Layer” icon which you will find at the bottom of the Layers palette window. Rename the new layer to “left highlight” and click “OK”.

Step 20

Select the newly create “left highlight” layer (we have named it “left highlight” because we will use it to add a highlight to the left part of the iris) from the Layers palette. For the foreground color select white (press D and then X). Use a soft-edged brush again and paint a white highlight on the left side of each iris.

Continue to Part 3

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