FAQ III – Photoshop Tutorial: Eyes

Hey everyone :) Frequently Asked Question blog number 3 … here we go:

How do you get the images (especially the eyes) so sharp and colorful? I saw the before and after picture on your blog….WOW….it blew me away!! You are amazing!!!!!! Would you ever do or would ever be interested in doing a photoshop tutorial!?!? Pretty pleasssse??? :)

Okay so I got this question a while back after my last FAQ and I thought I’d take some time to do a full photoshop tutorial on how I edit the eyes in my photos. Please keep in mind that I’m not saying this is the only way to do it or even the right way to do it – this is just the way I do it.

Okay so I start with the original photo shown below:

1) I use the spot healing brush or clone stamp tool to remove any “flaws” on her skin or on the surroundings.

2) I then smoothen out her skin. There’s a variety of ways to do this, use whichever one you prefer.

3) Then I play with brightness, contrasts and curves until the photo is just the way I want it.

4) For this photo I then add a light vignette just to add some dramaaaa.

5) Now onto the eyes … this is what we have now:

6) The first thing I’m going to do is duplicate the layer. Then I’m going to sharpen the top layer as much as I want the eyes to be sharpened by.

Then I hit okay.

(The numbers for you will be different according to the size of your image etc .. I’m just giving you an example.)

Then you go Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All.

Next, draw with a white brush over the parts of the eyes that you want sharpened. After you’ve added the sharpness to the eyes, play with the opacity until it’s the way you want it. 100% is way too strong for me, so I moved it down to 43% or something.

Now I have this:

The eyes are a bit sharper. Then I move on to using the dodge/burn tools to accentuate the eye. These can be found here:

I use the dodge tool to go around the pupil of the eye and I use the burn tool to surround the edges of her eye along with her eyeliner. Afterwards it looks something like this:

Kind of freaky, right? haha. Anyways so then I do the same thing as before, I lower the opacity to about 33% in this case, and I end up with this:

Don’t forget after lowering the opacity of layers to merge the layers. Otherwise it lowers the opacity of any actions you do afterwards.

So we went from this to this:

Keep in mind that there’s a lot more you can do with layers – change the eye color, saturate the eye color, sharpen even more, etc etc … I just thought I’d keep it relatively simple and straightforward. I want to enhance people’s eyes but I really avoid making them look unrealistic (although, you should see my earlier work – the eye work is freaky and totally unrealistic.. we all go through phases, right? haha)

Here’s the transition:

That’s it for now people :) Hope you’re all enjoying your weekends :) :)

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