Photo Touch Up - Removing Red Eyes Using Adobe Photoshop - A Step by Step Guide

You might just have a photo which looks absolutely perfect except for the glowing “red eyes” caused by the flash of the camera. This guide will help you fix this by doing a photo touch up using Adobe Photoshop. This can be done on any version of Photoshop in less than 5 minutes.

First open the image. Then if you have Photoshop CS2, CS3 or CS4 go to “Image” then “Duplicate” and close the original image. This will prevent you from editing or losing your original picture. If you have any Photoshop version which is 6 or an earlier version go to “View” then “New View”. If you have Photoshop 7 then go to “Windows” then “Documents” then “New Document”. This will open a duplicate window of the same image so that you can touch up the duplicate photo.

Make sure that you zoom in so the eye that you will edit is large enough and you can see it clearly. Try and set the zoom of the window to 100 percent. Then create a new layer. Go to “Layer” and click the “Create New Layer” option. Use the eyedropper tool to get the color from the eye. Make sure that the color that you pick with the eyedropper matches the natural color of the eye you are editing. You may need to zoom in closer. Paint over the red portion of the eye on the new layer that you have created but don’t paint on the lids of the eye.

Then select “Filters” then “Blur” then “Gaussian” and put the value of the radius to 1 pixel. Also go to layer mode option and select “Saturation”. This is used to get rid of the red without affecting the highlights. But the eyes often look hollow. If this happens duplicate the saturation layer and set the blending mode to “Hue”. Now if the color of the eye becomes too dark lower the opacity of this new “Hue” layer until you are happy with the final result of your photo touch up.

The whole process is much quicker with Photoshop CS2, CS3 or CS4 because of the new “Red Eye” tool. It is best to start with duplicating the background layer. The easiest way to do that is to drag the background layer from the Layers palette into the “Create new layer” icon. Then take the Red Eye tool and click with it on every red eye. Sometimes the edited eyes become too dark and you need to reduce the opacity of the duplicate layer.

When you are satisfied with the result select “Layer” then “Merge Layer” or you can click on “Flatten image” from the drop down menu in the Layers palette and you are done with your photo touch up.