Give finishing touches to portraits with sparkling eyes using Photoshop CS, CS2, CS3, CS4

Capturing portraits worked very well.

Despite that, the results on the PC are nothing close to a professional output. Something is missing. Especially the eyes are often to dark and matte, they do not work well as the starting point of the photo. The eyes are indeed the most important part of a portrait photo. With the right sparkle in the eyes, photos have just the perfect effect. It is recommended that the eyes be paid special attention during the touch up.


Removing the veins: First, create a copy of the background layer in the layer palette using the key combination [Ctrl]+[J]. To remove small hairs around and red veins in the eyes, the ‘Clone stamp’ is the ideal tool. Inconsistencies around the eyes can be removed using ‘Section repair brush’.


Important: for the touch-up, you must work at least with the view set to 100%. Reducing the reds: The white part of the eyes is usually somewhat red which does not look nice. Create a setting layer from the type ‘Color tone/Saturation’ in the layer palette. Reduce the saturation with that and increase the brightness. Make sure that you do not increase it too much; otherwise the white soon starts looking greyish. With [Ctrl]+[I] flip the mask. Now, with the brush tool and white foreground color, re-paint the white part of the eyes. In order to make the white more striking, activate the option for the eye-white by keeping the [Ctrl]-key pressed and clicking on the mask in the layer ‘Color tone/Saturation 1’. Through the layer palette, now open ‘Tonal value correction’ layer and brighten the white with it once again. For that, drag the white controller towards the left to the end of the tonal value.


Finally, reduce the opacity of the layer a bit. Brightening the iris: For that, again, create a setting layer ‘Tonal value correction’. Close this dialog without any changes by clicking ‘OK’. With the ‘Linear Dodge’ mode selected, the layer does its work. Flip the mask with [Ctrl]+[I]. With the brush set on the foreground color as white, paint on the area around the pupils. Now run the fi lter ‘Gaussian blur’ on the mask and then minimize the opacity a bit. Darkening the iris ring: It is now time to darken the outer iris ring. We will again need to use the ‘Tonal value correction’ layer, this time, with the mode ‘Color Burn’. With [Ctrl]+[I], the mask is inverted again. Then trace the border of the iris with a thin brush tip. Finally, use the ‘Gaussian blur’ again on the mask. Here too, reduce the opacity of the layer a bit. Final touch: In the last step refi ne the fi nish of the eyes. For that, create a tonal value correction layer and set the layer mode to ‘multiply’. With [Ctrl]+[I], invert the mask and trace the eyelashes using a thin brush tip. You will again need to use the ‘Gaussian blur’ filter. You will also need to set the radius to 1-2. With a larger brush tip and reduced opacity, the eyebrows and eyelids can be touched up.