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Hack 69 Sponge Out Red Eye

What works better than Visine for getting the
red out? Photoshop's desaturating sponge is fast and
effective, and it doesn't sting.

The ancients knew that red eye
was caused from drinking too much Barolo, a wine so red it colored
your teeth purple. We moderns like to think it has to do with dilated
pupils looking directly at a camera whose flash is too close to the
lens.

Of all the goodies Photoshop provides, it doesn't
have one of those nifty automatic red-eye-removal tools, or at least
there isn't one called out on the floating Tools
palette. Instead, Photoshop gives you a more powerful tool: the
desaturating sponge. This hack will show you how to use it.

6.9.1 Why Desaturate?

Red eye is the
reflection of
the flash off the retina in the back of the eye. Typically, this
happens in low-lighting situations, when the pupil is dilated. We
want to neutralize the red retina, and let it go back to being the
unilluminated body part it really is. That is, we want to lose all
the color information, leaving it a dark, gray shadow.

But we don't want to lose any of those sparkling
little highlights near it. Several generations of the Peale family
became portrait painters who were famous for dotting the eyes of
their subjects (such as George Washington) with a touch of titanium
white, just to get the translucent effect of that catch light. Keep
the tradition alive. Don't change the luminance;
just change the color.

6.9.2 How to Desaturate

In any version of Photoshop, open the image that features your
red-eyed subject. Click on the Sponge tool, and at the top of the
contextual menu bar, choose Desaturate, as shown in Figure 6-16. Set the flow to 100% and pick a brush tip
that's appropriate for the diameter of your
subject's eyes. In the case of this little boy, 13
pixels seemed about right for the tip of the brush.

Figure 6-16. Setting up the desaturating sponge in Photoshop Elements

In Photoshop, the bracket keys ([ and ]) increase and decrease the size of the brush. You'll also want a soft-edged tip rather than a hard one. This somewhat blends the edges, so your edit won't be noticeable.

To help make your work a little more accurate in any image-editing
software, set the cursor to display as the brush size. That makes it
easy to size the brush to the red eye itself. In Photoshop, you can
change this setting via the Display & Cursors preference box
(EditPreferencesDisplay & Cursors).

Make sure your image is at 100% magnification, and use the
desaturating sponge to paint the area that shows the red eye. Like
magic, the red will disappear, but the rest of the eye will still
look normal. You can see the difference after just a few seconds of
work. When you've exorcized the red demon from your
subject's eyes, save the image and move on to the
next possessed photo.

One thing the ancients had right was their appreciation for the
simple things in life. This technique is one of them.
It's a must-know technique for anyone who shoots
flash pictures with a point-and-shoot digicam.

Mike Pasini