Retouching eyes by enhancing in Adobe Photoshop

Hi there, in this example we are going to take our eyes, and just give them a little boost. Enhancing what's there, using the Dodge and Burn, and the Sponge Tool. Let's do it now in Photoshop. 

To get started, from your '10 Retouching' folder, open up 'Eyes 1'. First thing we're going to do is we're going to duplicate it. So with the layer selected, 'Command J', or 'Ctrl J' on a PC to duplicate the layer. Even give it a name. Call it 'Retouch'. Now this video is all about enhancing what's there. The videos after this, we'll look at faking it a little bit more. So let's look at enhancing rather than faking in this video. We'll see how far we get. 

So first thing we're going to do is we're going to saturate the eyes. So they're brown eyes, we're going to make them more brown. So click and hold down the 'Dodge Tool' until you find the Sponge Tool. Sponge Tool has two modes, Desaturate and Saturate. We want to 'on' Saturate. And in terms of the brush we want something that's going to fit around the pupil, and in terms of the hardness, I have mine fully fuzzy, hardness of '0'. And then with the flow, somewhere in the middle. What we're going to do is just slowly work. When I say slowly, it's not 40%, it's going pretty fast, 52 exactly. So don't worry if you go too far. 

We're going to dial this back with the opacity. So it's okay to go too far. This other side here is going to run into some problems because there's not a lot of saturated color in here. So I can keep working this, I can work a little bit, but eventually you're going to find that, it's there but it's a bit pixelated, not amazing. And it's going to be one of the issues, well not the issues, but one of the things we run into when we're retouching, say this side here, it's a very strong light being used. So this side's always going to be dark, just going to have to live with it if you want this to be natural. Don't worry I'll show you how to fake it. 

Let's say that works for us. So it's saturated now, let's look at working with the lights and darks. So basically we want to make the-- kind of shines brighter, and the pupils darker, and maybe a little bit around the outside too. The best way to do it is-- it's in that same little group, Dodge and Burn. Dodge makes things whiter, Burn makes things darker, so grab the little pedal. So we're going to brighten it up first. And what are we going to brighten? I'm going to brighten the highlights. I want the highlights to get brighter. Exposure is just like how much of this is being applied, I have mine low enough. I'm going to click this a couple of times, just to brighten up the shine. Same this side. Not too far on the side because maybe this one is darker for a reason. 

You might decide that you want to lighten up some of the centers here as well. So you go to Mid Tones, and I'm going to wreck it. Maybe this side just needs a little brightening up. Maybe the same with the eyes, in this case because the eyes are quite gray, I'm going to use the Mid Tones, I'm going to keep it quite low and just not too much. Always goes too far using the Burn Tool. That's okay, we can turn it down, don't you worry. 

So how are we doing? Yes. Last tool is the Burn Tool, and if you're like me, looking for shortcuts, you can switch to the Burn Tool. I'll toggle between these two tools, it's not a problem, but if you are on the Dodge Tool and you want to start burning something, say you're dodging the eye, and you want to burn this bit, just hold down the 'Option' key on a Mac or the 'Alt' key on a PC. Nothing really changes over here, except now, these exact same settings are being used for the Burn Tool. You can see, I can kind of darken up my Mid Tones, or let's do it the long way, go to Burn Tool, and I'm going to pick a size in here for the pupil, darken that up. Same on this side, darken that up. It's going on through too thick, so I'm going to lower down the exposure. And yes, it's way too far, but now we can, with this layer selected, go to the 'Opacity' and just kind of lower down to something believable. 

Turn this layer on and off. You can see, we've worked the eyes up without having to fake them. Now I picked this image because it's kind of in the middle, right? It is-- the eyes aren't totally, like obscured and pixelated, but it's not a super high res stock photography image. So this is a bit of realism here. So first up, saturate them using the Sponge Tool. Then dodge and burn them. Dodge makes the sparkles brighter, the whites of the eyes brighter, and the Burn Tool, we just use for the pupils, and I use a little bit around the edge to define the eye a bit more. All on its own Retouch Layer so that we can lower the opacity. 

I'll show you one other way of doing it, and is it faking? Kind of no, I'd say this is enhancing. So I'm going to turn off my Retouch Layer and do a different method. This is going to be my 'Retouch 2'. What I'm going to do is I'm going to grab my Brush Tool'. Pick a Brush size that kind of fits with the eyeball there. Hardness, I'm going to bump up the opacity so you can see it there. Hardness, I'm going to have it about 80-ish. Now I'm going to pick a foreground color that matches the eye color that I want. Let's say, instead of making them green or blue, let's just enhance the brown that's there. So I'm going to pick a kind of a warm okrey, orange color. Actually I'm going to lower the hardness a bit, bit fuzzier. And we're just going to work in the eye here. Pretty caveman. 

Do the same on the other side. Zoom out, and then it's just finding a Blending Mode. So remember we had the problem before, there's just not a lot of hue in the eye to bring out-- remember, we tried to use the Sponge Tool. Now with this layer selected let's work through the Layer Modes. The shortcut is 'Move Tool', hold 'Shift', and tap the '+' key. Or you can do the long way, just keep clicking on these until you find something that is, let's say you-- Color Dodge, let's keep going. See what else is there, Color Dodge. Saturation is quite nice. Color Dodge is a bit extreme, so it will depend on the color you've chosen. Say you've chosen green eyes, you'll find that a different one of these will work. 

Let's say Color Dodge is cool, looks a little vampirey, but we're going to just lower the opacity to something more believable. Just turn it on, turn it off. We might still go through and duplicate this layer, and not use the saturation but definitely use the Dodge and Burn. Make this a bit brighter. And my Burn, holding down the 'Option' key, just to darken up the pupil there, same on this side. Darken up the pupil, close that out. So kind of just a different way, we get to a similar place, and it's mainly just changing the way we got the color. 

Was there an existing color that we can enhance or did we have to fake it? So on, off. That's the second version, on, and off. I'm just dragging across these eyes. Let's turn on this one here where we did the saturation with the Sponge Tool instead of this one, so this one versus this one. You got to decide. I think I like this one, but I think I like the situation just down a little bit more, bit more believable. That's it for phase one of eye retouching. Let's get into phase two where we fake it, but with faking it comes some pretty amazing results. I'll see you in the next video.