Tutorial – Eye Enhancement
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
So, having played with Photoshop for a while ( 1997, I was 10 ! ) , Ive learnt a few tips and tricks.
Ill be posting tutorials here, and if you would like to ask for one, mail me at kyle@kreation.co.za. 
Eye Enhancement
This tutorial will become a video tutorial in the new year but for now, ill put the image up with plain text.
Eye Enhancement via Luminosity.
1. Duplicate your image layer and lock it.
2. Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Black and White.
3. Name that layer, FX_Luminosity-Eyes
4. Where the settings come up, move the sliders around until you get the most detail and contrast out of your eyes. You want to focus mainly on the details in the eyes and the catch lights. If your eye is light, make it darker. And visa-versa. The key is contrast and detail. If it goes a little bit blocky, its okay, but too much and you need to reduce the intensity a little bit.
5. Set that layers Blending Mode to Luminosity.(The last on the list.)
Chances are that your image will look a little funny now, and this is where the trick comes in.
Next to that layer’s name, is the Alpha Layer Box.
- The Alpha Layer Mask is the white box next to the Black and White Adjustment Layer Icon
Click on that white box and press Ctrl + i ( or on our lovely Mac’s Cmd + i ) to invert it and now it should be black and it looks unchanged.
6. Now grab the “Brush” tool, set it to a low opacity and small brush size, 0% hardness.
7.Paint in the eye. For those with Tablets, now’s your time to shine. Otherwise, just brush in with a thin brush and then a bigger one and paint over the catchlights, details and shadows of the eye. And as you do so youll be enhancing that contrast in the image.
8. After that, I added a Solid Color Layer, Blending Mode to Overlay , and painted the whole iris, except the catch-lights. Set to an orange color, to enhance the color of the eye.
9. New Solid Color layer, set to Overlay, and painted the catch-lights. Slight bluish color to bring some shine to it.
10. Finally, A new adjustment layer. This time, Hue-Saturation Layer, with Saturation set to 0. Blending mode set to Soft-Light. This “tones” the image and adds a nice dimension to it. Has a similar effect to the “Contrast” function, without burning out the colors. This effect works well on almost everything.
11. The final eye on the right is with a few more tweaks that I did to the eye. Play around that’s the only way to learn !