Tuesday Tips & Pics - Easy Eye Pop Tutorial

Hey everyone! For this weeks Tips & Pics I wanted to share a really easy way to make eyes pop in pictures--without getting zombie eyes! I think its really important to edit eyes carefully so they don't look unnatural and glowing!

Here's the pic I started with which has had basic Lightroom adjustments only.

Because he was facing me and I shot this at a really low aperture, the eye closer to the camera is sharper and the far eye is a little soft, but this tutorial still works.

I use both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements depending on which computer I'm on. I did this on Elements, but it works fine in either. I start by zooming in on the eyes so I can see them nice and close up. And I use my magic wand tool and a low brush size to select both eyes. I love this tool because it has a plus and minus option, so if I select too much I can switch the minus and un-select a bit. Then it's important to feather your selection--this keeps there from being a hard line where your edits are done and helps your edit blend.



On Elements simply go to Select-->Feather. On Photoshop, you have to go to Select-->Modify-->Feather. I set my feathering to 20 pixels for this shot but if your feather makes your selection circle too small you can make this number smaller.

After it's feathered, hit Ctrl-J on a PC or Command-J on a mac to create a new layer. Your new layer will simply be the eyes. Make sure you stay selected on your new layer and even though your selection circle disappeared your edits will only apply to the eye, because thats the only thing in your new layer. At this point, you can also adjust the brightness/contrast and saturation of the eyes but be careful doing this too much or it can look unrealistic.

Then you're going to apply a High Pass Filter.



Go to Filter-->Other-->High Pass. I set mine to about 15 but you can play with it to see what you like.

When you hit OK your picture will look like it has CRAZY ZOMBIE EYES. Don't worry, we aren't done.

Change your blending mode to overlay and then adjust the opacity of the layer. Soft Light blending mode works nicely too and is slightly more subtle than overlay, if that's what you prefer.



For this picture, I left the opacity at 100% but on others, I've had to lower it to about 50% to get the affect I liked. Here's the comparison.



I really like how defined the eye looks without going over the top. Then I ran Pioneer Woman's Boost action at about 30% and added a touch of vignette and I was done.







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Share what you've been shooting below, and remember you are welcome to link up even if you don't have a tip to share because we can learn just by seeing each others work!