Editing Eyes

I've been reading a new photography book lately.  It's focused around advanced editing techniques, and I've found it very interesting.  I've been learning a few new tricks that I have been trying out on some of my photos.  One of the techniques I've been trying is editing eyes.  There are some wonderful tips on how to really enhance and bring out the eyes in a photo.  I thought I'd post a few before and afters of what I've been working on! I want to thank my models Nicky and her son Dorian!  The photo of Nicky I'm using I actually took this summer when she modeled for me to advertise my pin up sessions, and the ones of Dorian I actually took today when we went on a photowalk.

 This is an SOOC (straight out of camera) image.  Notice how her eyes don't pop out... For a professional image, it is important that the eyes become something that stand out in an image...

Here is my edit... notice I edited more than just the eyes, but this blog is focusing on eye edits, so I won't be mentioning any of the skin or color edits I've made.  Notice how when you look at this image compared to the original, her eyes pop.  You can see the whites are brighter, the pupil is darker, there's more contrast and brightening of the iris.  Also you will notice the eyes are sharper in this image.  These are all important things to really making the eyes pop!

Here is another before and after of how I've edited the eyes.  On this image you can notice everything I mentioned before... The whites are brighter, the iris more vibrant, and the pupils darker.  One thing that I did differently here, is that I added more hue to the iris.  I really wanted his blues eyes to be vibrant and pop, so I added more blue to his iris when I edited it.

  

Now with this image I made all the same edits, but I made the whites of his eyes too white.  I did this specifically to show that you can actually over edit the eyes also.  His pupils and iris both look great, but if you notice the whites look a bit unnatural.  They almost look like I took and painted them white instead of just brightening them.  This can be an easy mistake to make, and is common in people just learning how to edit.  It was a mistake I use to make all the time before I learned how to actually edit the eyes correctly.  Here instead of his eyes being something that draws your attention because it adds that special pop, it draws your attention because it's too contrasty.  When playing around with eye edits beware of this mistake.  It is better for the whites of the eyes to be slightly too dark than too white.  

Now I know I haven't mentioned how I made these edits.  There isn't really a cut and dry "here's what you do" because every image is different.  I will mention some of the basic steps I did, but the in depth how to is found in the book I purchased called  Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers using Photoshop by Scott Kelby.

The basic steps I took was to first darken the pupil by copying my background layer and setting it to softlight.  I then masked everything but the pupil.  Next I took and used the circle marquee tool to select each iris and feather them, then I made a levels layer on multiply, reselected the eyes and contrasted it a few pixels and erased the middle.  This allowed for the rim of the iris to be darker.  Next I used the circle marquee again to select the iris and I colored them in white and used the rectangle and/or circle to select most of the white erased it leaving a semi circle of white.  Then I gaussian blurred and changed it to soft light.  This gives a lighter area within the iris.  

I'm sure that's a lot of information jumbled up in one paragraph.  I do plan on making a step by step tutorial, but for tonight I'm off here to get some sleep.  It's almost 1AM, and I have children that will be waking me up early.  I hope you found this helpful!