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Removing the Red Eye

Preventing Red-Eye

Why do you see red in your photos? Red eye occurs when the subject’s pupils reflect the light of the flash directly back into the lens of the camera. Here are a few steps on preventing red in your photos:

• Hold the camera just above or below your subject’s eyes. This will limit the amount of light that will reflect straight back into the lens. Taking photos from a side angle will also help this.
• Use more lighting in your photo taking. Adding lamps with soft watt light bulbs around your subject or taking the photo outside in the sun will make your subject’s pupils smaller, meaning less light can be reflected back into the camera lens.
• Ask your subject not to look directly into the lens. Looking away means the light will reflect at more of an angle rather than straight back at the lens.

It’s one of the most common problems encountered as we capture life on film—the dreaded glowing red eyes. While sometimes it can be fun to show the devilish side of things, it’s no picnic when red eye is the only thing standing between you and the perfect photo for your page.

With some quick and simple steps in your photo editing software, you can cover up the glow and make your picture perfect again. Here’s how:

Open your photo editing software and use the “File” menu to open the image you wish to fix. Zoom in on the eyes of the subject.
Select your tools. In PhotoShop Elements, select the Red-Eye Brush and select an appropriate brush size—one that’s smaller than the subject’s pupils. In other image editing software you can use the Paint Bucket or Paintbrush tool.
Pick your colors. You can do this by clicking on the “Default Colors” button on the Options bar and selecting “Current Color” from the pull-down menu next to it, or clicking on the foreground color shown in your toolbar. Click on the area of the color you want to select in the Color Picker box.

Be sure that the color you’re painting the eyes is black or very dark gray so the pupils will look natural (though dark colors may look unnatural while you’re zoomed in, once you finish coloring the eye and zoom out, they do look natural.
Color over the red. Position the paintbrush cursor over the subject’s pupil and click the mouse. Keep the mouse button pressed and drag in a small circle to paint over all of the red. With the Paint Bucket, position the cursor over the section you need to color and click once to fill. Repeat if necessary. Repeat for the other eye and use the Undo function from the Edit menu if you make a mistake.