Getting the Red Out Without Eyedrops in Photoshop

Red eye occurs when the subject of a picture looks directly into the flash, and the unfortunate result is that eerie reddish luminescence in the eyes that says, “Not only didn’t I get any sleep last night, but I’m also auditioning for the remake of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.”

The flash bouncing off the blood vessels in the retina and right back into the camera’s lens causes the red-eye effect. You’ll see red eye most often in pictures taken in dim light because the pupils are at their largest in low-light conditions. You may also see red eye if you’re using a camera with a flash that’s very close to the camera’s lens (thereby making it easier for the light to bounce straight back into the lens). The best way to fix red eye is to avoid it completely.

That usually means getting a flash camera that can work around it:

- Many cameras have a red-eye prevention mode. Usually, this mode triggers a quick, bright preflash just before taking the actual picture. The preflash causes the subjects’ irises to contract, making their pupils smaller when the second flash (that is, the real flash) goes off.

- Some cameras mount the flash high or to one side of the lens. This simple trick also minimizes the chance of red eye. However, these preventive measures are of little solace when you’ve got a great picture that features bright red pupils as its most dominating feature.

Here’s a quick way to paint out red eye and restore your image to a less zombielike look:
1. Open the original photo with red eye showing.
2. Select the pupil of one of the eyes. I recommend using the Elliptical Marquee tool.
Press Alt (Option on the Mac) to draw your ellipse from the center out. If your selection doesn’t quite match the shape of the pupil, don’t sweat it. You can fix that in the next step.
3. Choose Select➪Transform Selection.
The transform box appears around your selection. To adjust the selection marquee, drag the handles on the transform box to either rotate or scale the marquee. This will soften the edge of the selection, creating a more natural transition.
6. Press D to get the default colors.
7. Choose a fuzzy-edged brush from the Brushes palette.
The size isn’t really important. Because you have a selection marquee, your brush strokes will not spill outside the marquee boundary.
8. Select Color from the Mode dropdown list in the Options bar.
The Color mode enables you to apply color while allowing the tones and textures of the image to show through. Note that you can also use the new Color Replacement tool to fix red eye. Set the mode to Hue or Color and follow step 9.
10. Paint inside the selection.
Only the pupil of the eye is selected, so you can paint without fear of covering up any other parts of the eye. If you want to hide the selection marquee, choose View➪Show➪ Selection Edges. You may notice one or two catchlights
(reflections of light sources such as windows or the flash that made the picture) on the eye, which is unnatural. Of course, having no catchlight at all is even more unnatural! You can cover the extraneous smaller catchlight in each pupil if you want, but try not to obscure the main catchlight.