Focus on the eyes

I have seen a number of tutorials on eyes over the past months.

It lead me to look at working on eye enhancements in portraits and even some extreme eye work with selective colur / sharpening and de-saturation.



I took these pictures and went through the following pocess;

>Duplicate Layers
>Select the eye>Smart Sharpen (130-159%)
>Contrast +7 - +15
>Erase the desaturated eye revealing the sharpened colourful eye
>Use the dodge tool to bring the whites back
>Flatten image and crop

I used the same technique on all however on the picture of Ruby (above) I brought her graze back in for the horror look!



With Chloe I adjusted the desaturated layer with curves to give a high key feel to it. Somehow it didnt have the drama with her brown eyes so it needed a bit more.

This teqnique is less harrowing if you have a softer photo IMO. On the picture of my daughter below I had a narrow DOF, it works better as it doesnt look that our of place.



So basically, to deal with the eyes just select them, change the contrast/saturation then smart sharpen until you feel they look right. I always frin 159% looks heavily processed but if your going for that look great. I change some portrait eyes the other day and went to 119%, it was subtle yet effective. I didnt need to change the contrast on that one as Evie has great eyes.