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Sometimes things are just plain easier in the "real world." One example of this is getting the red out of your eyes. With a few eye drops, the red is gone in a matter of minutes. As people are editing photographs on their computers, they are looking for those magic drops. As you'll see in this article, it is really an easy problem to fix and the magic drops are not the best way to do it.
You've just taken a roll of film with all of your family and friends on it. But when it comes back from being developed, everyone has those evil red eyes. The red is caused by the eyes reacting to the flash on the camera. By adjusting the flash, you can eliminate the problem though lower end cameras typically won't allow this. Our first example shows a pretty girl with an absolutely evil look in her eyes.
As this is a very common problem, you'll find special filters in most image editing software to get things fixed. A frequent complaint is that Corel PHOTO-PAINT doesn't include such a filter. Folks, have you tried these filters? They don't work! All they will do is turn red blobs into blue blobs. The "fixed" eyes do not look real. For those who just have to have such a filter, Corel has added one in PHOTO-PAINT 10. The original picture as fixed by one of the automated wizards is shown at left.
What most users don't realize is that fixing red eye correctly only takes about two minutes, maybe less. And when you do it the right way, the eyes will look real. In short, there are three steps. First, we isolate the eyes. Then we remove the existing color. Lastly, we add back the color that we want. And if your favorite person doesn't like the true color of their eyes, this gives you a chance to make them whatever color they want.
OK, the first step is to isolate the eyes. We'll do this with the masking tools. Because the eyes are typically only a few pixels in most photographs, you'll probably want to zoom in a bit so that you can see them better. Now select the Brush Mask tool from the Mask tool flyout. On the Property Bar, change the brush size to be fairly small using the Nib Size slider. The actual size will be somewhat dependent on the size of the eyes. I'll set mine to 3 pixels. Click on the + on the Property Bar so that you can add to the mask with each brush stroke. The Mask Brush tool is at the right end of the Mask tool flyout and the Nib Size slider is on the Property Bar.
Note that your cursor is a circle indicating the brush size as shown below. Using this brush, paint over the entire red portion of the eyes. This is by far the most difficult part of the process and I think you'll find it to be pretty easy. Just make sure to get all of the red in the eyes without getting into the eyelid or the face below the eye. Again, if you are having trouble getting exactly what you need then you might have to zoom in or use a smaller brush size. In this 400% zoomed view of our image you can see the Mask brush cursor as we start to paint over the eye on the left side.
Step two is removing the existing color. This is really easy. Select Image | Adjust | Desaturate. This will turn the red eye into a grayscale eye. Since the gray looks much more natural than red, some of you will be happy to stop at this point. At right is our original picture after desaturating the eyes.
Our last step is to put the color back and we'll do this with one of the Effects brushes. Left click on the color you want for the eyes in the color palette. Note that the end result will be much lighter than the color you select. Now go to the Brush tool flyout and select the Effect tool. It's the one that looks like a cotton swab. Move up to the Property Bar and click the down arrow at the far left. This gives you a pop down menu of all the different effects. Select the one that looks like a pair of sunglasses as it is the Tint tool. First select the Effect tool and then the Tint tool from the dropdown at upper left.
Adjust the Nib Size slider so that the brush is larger than either of the eyes. To the right of the slider is the Amount of tint. Make sure this reads 5, the default setting. Move the brush so that it completely surrounds one of the masked eyes and click. The change is probably so small that you won't notice it. Click again and repeat until you are happy with the result. I typically use 3-4 clicks per eye. When you're finished with one eye, repeat on the other one. Our pretty girl now has some soft blue eyes.
That wasn't so painful, was it? We could certainly spend more time and tweak the eyes until they are perfect, but with the small size nobody would notice. The important thing is that they are no longer red and they look much better than what you'd get with the automated filter.
The process of fixing red eye is a very common question and you've seen how simple it can be with the three easy steps demonstrated here. This also shows you how the simplicity of "wizards" in the software is sometimes a hindrance rather than a help. Don't be afraid to dig into your software and do things manually. The results will almost always look better and most likely it isn't that much more difficult.
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CorelDRAW X6 Font List · CorelDRAW X5 Font List · CorelDRAW X4 Font List · The Terms of Adobe Photoshop and Corel PHOTO-PAINT · CorelDRAW X3 Font List · Cropping and Rotating Files in Corel PHOTO-PAINT · The Magic of Color Styles · CorelDRAW's Find and Replace Wizard · Shorten Your Design Time with Templates · CorelDRAW's Multi-Faceted Eyedropper Tool · CorelDRAW and Special Characters · The Easy Way to Create Calendars in CorelDRAW · The Wide World of Labels in CorelDRAW · Including Variable Data with Print Merge · Resaving, Resizing & Resampling Files in Corel PHOTO-PAINT · Creating Your Own Fonts in CorelDRAW · The Evils of Using JPEG Files · Speeding Up CorelDRAW 11 and Windows XP · Symbols and Imposition · The Easiest Way to Recreate Logos · A Few Guidelines to Follow · Square Corners Can Be Sticky -- Rounding Corners in CorelDRAW · Creating Complex Shapes Easily with CorelDRAW · Identifying the Mystery Font · Two Ways to Create a Split Front Design · Last Word in Font Management · Calibrating Your Printed Colors with a Color Chart · Graphics Computing in 2001 · Hottest R.A.V.E. In Town · Get the Red Out of Eyes · Secrets of Color Management · Dressing Up Your PDF Files · How Adobe Acrobat Can Make Life Simpler · Why You Want PDF in Your Workflow · Converting a Scanned Logo to Vector in CorelDRAW · Designing 360 Degrees · Customizing Your Interface in CorelDRAW 8.0 · Fitting Text to a Path · Creating Cool Graphs Without a Spreadsheet · From CorelDRAW to Macromedia Flash, A Simple Example · Getting Rid of That Darned White Box · Converting a Bitmap Logo to Vector in CorelDRAW · Finding Clipart with ROMCAT
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Serif WebPlus X2
Xara Web Designer 5.0
Xara Xtreme Pro 4.1
Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Professional
Fuji FinePix 2800 Zoom Digital Camera
Procreate KnockOut 2
Hemera Photo Objects Volume I and II
Wildform SWfx
Macromedia Fontographer 4.1 and FontLab 4
Caligari iSpace v1.5
Xara X
Macromedia Fireworks 4
Web Site Design Made Easy
Alien Skin Eye Candy 4000
Swish 1.51
Macromedia Flash 5
Corel KPT 6
Dreamweaver Ultradev
1st Page 2000
Adobe Illustrator 9
Corel KnockOut v1.5
Xara 3D 4
Cool 3D 3
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