I know, a little cheesy, but SOOOOO true!  Haven’t you every gotten lost in your spouse’s eyes or seen that mischievous glint in your child’s?  I know I have -  I see that glint EVERYDAY in my oldest son!  LOL!  Have you ever wanted to capture that “window to the soul light” in a photo only to have your hopes smashed to smithereens after seeing the final picture?  Me too!  Well, here’s a little tip I learned from Jessica Sprague (aka The Photoshop Queen, in my opinion!) with a little addition of my own.

This technique works best on a photo where the catchlights.  What are catchlights you ask?  Well, a catchlight is simply the highlight of a light source reflected off the surface of the eye. This highlight adds depth and dimension to the eye, and gives the eyes life in a portrait or snapshot.  So now that we know what it is here is how we give them a little boost and really show off those “windows.”

1.  Find a photo that shows that catchlights fairly well.  Duplicate your photo so that you’re not working on the original.  I chose this photo I took of my daughter on her 7th birthday.  She wanted to have a supermodel photo shoot!  Is she gorgeous, or is it just me?  I guess I could be a little biased, but I’m definitely proud of my contribution to this little cutie! ; )

It’s a pretty good photo, but I want her eyes to show more of what I see in them all the time.

2.  Find your dodge tool in PS or PSE.  It’s in the same spot as your burn and sponge tool in your toolbar.  It looks like a stick with a round thing on top of it.  The burn tool looks like a hand and the sponge tool looks like a sponge (how clever!)  If you can’t find the dodge tool right click on the hand or the sponge, whichever one is shown in your toolbar and the dodge tool should show up in the fly out menu.  Okay, now that we’ve all found our dodge tool. . . .

3.  Zoom WAAAAAYYYY in on your photo - so you have a good view of the catchlights in the eyes.  Set your dodge tool to “Highlight” and 100%.  Choose a small round brush - mine was set to 7.  Click a FEW times directly on the catchlights and you should see them brighten.  DO NOT click all over them.  Just do it in the lightest spots of the catchlights and you only need to click a FEW times - I probably did it 4-5 times.

4.  Zoom back to see what it looks like.  If you need to, add some more.  You might try lowering the exposure to 50% and seeing what effect that gives you.  Play around!  That’s why you are working on a duplicate of your original - you CAN’T mess it up!  See how much brighter the catchlights are now?  Gorgeous. . . but I think we could do a couple more things.

5.  Grab your elliptical marquee tool and select just the irises of the the eyes. If you hold down the shift button while you are selecting you can add to the selection.  It was pretty easy to select just the irises but if you need to make more than one circle to do it just hold down the shift key (add to selection) until everything you want is selected.  Now do the other eye too, while holding down the shift key.  Hint:  If you make a mistake and want to deselect a portion use the Alt button instead of the shift key.  With the selection active (ants marching) I hit Ctrl+J to make my selection a new layer of it’s own.

6.  Now with your new layer active in the layers palette click on Filter> Sharpen> Unsharp mask.  In the new window Jessica Sprague recommends entering:  Amount 85%, Radius 1, Threshold 4, but that really didn’t look too different to me so I entered:  Amount 85%, Radius 9.8, Threshold 4.  Just play around with the sliders and see what looks best.  Don’t go overboard though - you don’t want it too sharp! I really just wanted to bring out the different colors in her irises.  See the difference?  It’s subtle, but it’s there.

7.  Merge the two layers back into one layer.  That’s as far as Jessica’s tutorial takes us, but I like to do one more little thing.  Grab your elliptical marquee tool again and this time select the entire eyeball (whites and irises).  Try not to get get the eyelids and eyelashes but it doesn’t have to be perfect.  I just kept making little circle and oval selections (while holding down the shift key) until the entire eye was selected.  Then I did the same thing with the other eye (still holding the shift key.)  With the selection active hit Ctrl+J again to make a new layer.

8.  Ctrl+click on the thumbnail of your new entire eye layer.  Ants should be marching around the eyes now, and click on the half-black/half-white circle in your layers palette to create a new adjustment layer.  From the fly out menu choose brightness/contrast.  Another window will open.  Adjust the brightness slider until you get that “window to the soul” look you want on your photo.  Mine was about +15.  Again, don’t go crazy here.  A little goes a long way - you don’t want alien eyes!!  Click OK and merge the layers back into one again if you’re satisfied with the final outcome.

It doesn’t look like a HUGE change but it definitely makes a difference in the whiteness of the whites.  Look at my before and after shots side by side.

Such a difference when you look at them all together, huh?  *patting myself on the back*  Now it’s your turn!  Go and practice so we can all see those gorgeous eyes and catchlights in your next LO’s!  Have a great weekend–Jeni!