Retouching Eyes for a Realistic Look (Photoshop CS3/CS4)

It's important to know what to look for when touching up eyes. The best way to do that is to study the eye itself, learn how light works with it. I suggest studying not only photos and anatomical drawings of the eye, but also studying how artists paint eyes to get a good foundation on how light works with it.

In your research you will find that the eye is roughly a sphere, though not a perfect circle. As a result, directional light that comes into the eye causes a highlight near the peak or pupil. It's also wet & lubricated, so bright catch-lights and highlights may be very close to if not pure white. Let’s say we have light hitting the camera-right side of the eye. This will bring more color & brightness to the iris on the opposite side of the catch-light (camera-left in the case of my example.)

The sclera, or white of the eye is rarely ever bright white all the way to the edges of the eye, especially with directional lighting. So when whitening the eyes, they should be brightest by the highlight and gradually fade to a light grey as you move away. The very corners could use a touch of pink or subtle red to add some life and make the transition believable. A bright white sclera from edge to edge will yield a fake glowing eyes look, which is not what we want.

Also remember, colors are relative to the light they are in. For example golden daylight at sunset will not yield a bright white sclera. You will get a yellow/orange tint to the eye. So painting the sclera white in this case would cause the eyes to look out of place with the rest of the image.

{HOW}
I start with a new eye layer containing another brighter exposure of the eye (sometimes from the RAW file) that is usually overlaid, multiplied or soft lighted in and masked to bring out more detail in the iris. Merge the new layer.

First let's tackle the sclera. Clone/heal or paint out any unwanted blood vessels and use the dodge tool at a low opacity to pop the whites near the highlight area only. Don’t go all the way to the edges. On a new layer with white or near white paint I accent the catch-light and highlight area of the sclera. Keep the highlight layer(s) until the end in case you want to change something.

Now let’s concentrate on the iris by 'painting' in exaggerated color lightly. The color is usually a derivation or accent of the iris color painted in the iris opposite the highlight with the paintbrush tool at a low opacity. Sample the color from the iris and brighten it in the color picker. This goes onto its own layer with the blend mode set to overlay, multiply or soft light – whichever looks better. I’ll further adjust this layer’s opacity until I get my desired result. You can enhance the original iris color by using the saturation tool at low opacity on the bottom layer. Merge any iris layers you have created.

Next I darken the very top of the iris into the pupil and slightly around the iris edges to bring more focus to the color, catch-light and highlight. I use the burn tool set at mid-tones on a low strength (maybe 15-30%) for this.

On certain images I will then sample the fleshy pink tone from the corner of the eye and using the color picker and make it slightly more red/pink. On a new layer with a very transparent paintbrush, I'll gently paint in the corner of the eyes and edge where the sclera meets the skin. I'll then adjust the opacity of this layer to get my desired result and merge it down.

Finally I'll revisit my highlight layer(s) and make any adjustments before merging them down.

As you may have guessed, if you're doing two eyes, it's best to work on both eyes at the same time so you can work in steps and concentrate on each step for the sake of consistency.


(Click image to enlarge)