iBasics

Remove Red Eye in Photoshop in Five Easy Steps

- 2005.10.19

Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

OWC: Mercury On-The-Go FW800+USB2 up to 1.0TB. Bus Powered, no external power supply needed. Macworld ‘Editor’s Choice’, CNET ‘Very Good’ Starting from $99.97, 500GB $159.99. Click here

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Taking pictures is a pleasure. Heck, digital photography is a perfectly enjoyable activity, especially because of the extra flexibility when it comes to transferring photos to a computer and manipulating them before printing.

On the other hand, you sometimes face this issue - people whose eyes turn red because of the camera's flash.

If you use Photoshop, there's a way to fix this. Let's go through a very simple five-step tutorial that allows you to take a red eye and "get the red out".


Original image with red eye

Step One: Create an Ordinary Layer

Open the original picture with Photoshop and look at the small Layers window. Normally - in most cases (if not all) - a picture downloaded from your digital camera will come with nothing but a "background" layer. Double click on that layer. A window will pop up. All you have to do is to click on OK. Rename the layer if you want to, but it really is optional.

Step Two: Create an Adjustment Layer

This is the centerpiece of the tutorial, because creating an adjustment layer paves the way for the elimination of the wrong color. Pull down the Layer menu, and point your mouse to the New Adjustment Layer element. Several choices will appear in a submenu, and you have to select Channel Mixer and click on OK without making any change.

Step Three: Adjust the Channel Mixer

Now, you are about to do something that will radically change the colors of your picture. Do not worry about it, this step is necessary. Everything will sort itself out with the next two steps.

In the Channel Mixer window, make sure that the Output Channel popup menu is set to Red. Then, take the Red slider and bring it back to 0%. The Blue and Green colors should both be set to 50%.

After adjusting the three colors, click on OK.


The Adjustment layer

Step Four: Paint It Black

In the small Layers window, take a look at your adjustment layer, which should be the first layer on top. Click once on the small rectangle on the right - that is the mask - and in the Tools window, select the Paint Bucket. Make sure that your paint color is black before going further.

Everything will seemingly go back to square one, red eyes included. Don't worry, that's not the case. The last step will provide the desired result.

Step Five: Kill the Red

Now choose the Brush tool and paint the red part of the eye using white (not black). If you take your time and use a small brush size, this can be done with a mouse. The red eye will turn into a perfectly normal eye, preserving the normal lighting that makes it shine.


After removing the red

Pull down the Layer menu and choose Flatten Image - and don't forget to save the new file.

Not only are you a talented photographer, but now you can eliminate one of photography's biggest enemies by taking the red out of any eye. Isn't that a great feeling? LEM

Michel Munger is a journalist who lives in Montréal. He discovered the Mac in 1994, and his work on a PC reminds him every day why he embraced Apple's platform. Munger has also authored some MacDaniel columns.

You can learn more about him on his personal website.

Recent columns by Michel Munger

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

All iBasics articles ©2001-2005 by Michel Munger. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.