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Howto » Photoshop » Red Eye Removal

Below is a photograph of my niece with the spooky red eyes.
What causes this annoying effect?
Quick answer - red color comes from the blood vessels nourishing our eyes.
Longer answer - read Why do people have red eyes in some flash photographs?" at Howstuffworks.com.

Our task here is to remove red-eye effect from this picture. Good red-eye correction takes time, practice and patience. I am sure there are other methods that might work better so bear with me.

First thing I did is to zoom the picture in order to see eye nuances better.

Now we have to select the red coloured area of the pupil. To make things simpler I selected circle area first using Elliptical Marquee Tool (M or Shift + M until it appears).

Now we adjust the selection a bit since it is never perfect circle that we need. Here is a nice selection trick that I use very often. Choose Polygonal Lasso Tool (L or press Shift + L until it appears). Press ALT and cut the selection the way you want (without releasing ALT button!). See the image below (I don't want to complicate to much here, but it is worth mentioning that SHIFT instead of ALT would expand the selection).

Now, go to Image » Adjust » Selective Color choose color Red and move the slider to Black 100%

Go to Image » Adjust » Color Balance or Press CTRL + B

I moved the slider to Cyan 60% but every image is different and every eye is different, so that you might need to play here around to get better results.

Repeat this technique with the other eye.

Here you go. My niece Mia with her eyes retouched.
No more red-eye effect and the image looks realistic.

I hope this helped. If there is anything you don't understand just ask.
If there is anything you don't agree with, complain about it.