[tbesek]

I Have been reading this forum for a few months now, and have learned so much. I am far from being a master restorer, but can do a pretty decent job of fixing up photos for friends and family.

I have one photo in particular that the red eye is so blown out it is next to impossible for me to repair it and have it look natural. I know the whole family all have blue eyes, hence th horrible demon eye, but I need some help.

What can I do to repair this and have it still look natural? Please give me some specific direction so I can learn.
If anyone wants to take it upon themselves to play, feel free. I just ask to have you explain step by step exactly what you did. My goal is not to just have someone do this for me, but to learn how to do it myself.
Thanks for your time. I have attached web sizes of the original, and the attempt I took to repair.
Here is a link to the full sized original.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ya_bday118.jpg

Thanks so much for taking the time to help me learn.

[Britsdad]

Tracy,
I'm no expert and I'm sure you'll get more indepth answers than this, but I think you've done a good job of shifting the red eye All I've done is add a curves adjustment layer and set black, white and grey points that I've indicated.
Hope this helps....John
Edit:--- I've just noticed, it's a little red so I've knocked the red saturation down to -33 and uploaded it again....looks better I think.

[philbach]

To correct the color, I used a levels adjustment layer. I used the white slider holding the option key which selected the girls white dress and clicked the white eyedropper on that. The black slider selected the background picture and I clicked the black eyedropper on that.

I downloaded your original and noted that there was a lot of grain in the photo so I used Neat Image at a gentle level to remove grain.

For the eyes,

Well I didn't try to use the red eye reduction tool. I used the lasso to select one set of eyes and then used the HSL slider to desaturate and darken the eyes. However there was so much reflection from the flash in the adjacent area that it changed the color of the iris and and eyelash. So on a separate layer I cloned in some eyelash and painted back in what I thought the color should be.

I painted in the white highlight too. So this is not your usual red eye correction problem

[tbesek]

Britsdad and Phil You guys both did excellent jobs.

Phil, your technique is close to what I tried. I couldn't use the red eye tool, and all the conventional hue/saturation/lightness adjustments didn't work since the pupil/iris were so blown out white.
I used layers for everything (each iris, pupil, and catchlight), and just repainted in colors and adjusted opacity. I kept the blending mode to normal on the layers. Typically when I recolor something I can adjust to color blending mode on the layers, but this wasn't working.

Great job guys! I will play a little more to make it more natural looking.

Maybe someone else may have a little gem of a trick to show off. :-)

[Swampy]

Sometimes, when I have problem with blowout areas, I will select them and do a Selective color adjustment on the Whites and add a tad of black (with absolute checked). This puts some density back into the white blownout areas.

[Kraellin]

welcome to RetouchPRO, tbesek.

your main request of the eyes i handled in Paint Shop Pro xi with the 'red eye removal' tool. this is a VERY useful tool for making or reconstructing eyes. it basically comes with a set of pre-fabricated 'eyes' in an assortment of colors, shapes, shades and so on. it's fairly adjustable, being able to change the eye size, color, pupil size, glint location and size and a couple other things. so, this is what i used on ALL the eyes here. you didnt specify what color of blue, so most of them are the same.

before i did the eyes, however, i also used a curves adjustment layer to re-balance the colors and lighting a bit. this was just to rough things in a bit better.

after the curves and eyes, i did a selection on the woman's face and ran a hue/sat on it to get rid of a bit of a blue pall there. i simply made things a bit more red.

after that i made a new blank layer and touched up faces with airbrushing and push (heavy smudge tool in Paint Shop Pro). i blurred this layer to smooth this out.

i copy merged and pasted all this to a new layer.

on that i ran a 'digital camera noise removal' as there was quite a bit of dark noise thoughout the image.

duplicated that and ran a 'clarify' for contrasting.

and i cropped all this to a 5 x 7 inch format.

i then re-sized for posting.

i could also have taken out the balloon ribbon. it really wasnt serving any purpose, but i left it in just in case someone wanted a reminder that this was a birthday celebration

[tbesek]

Thanks everyone for your tips and ideas.

Swampy, thank you, I didn't even think of using selective coloring to get rid of that blown white. I never took it off relative before. It helped a ton!

Originally Posted by Swampy

Sometimes, when I have problem with blowout areas, I will select them and do a Selective color adjustment on the Whites and add a tad of black (with absolute checked). This puts some density back into the white blownout areas.

[Swampy]

Glad to be of help, Tracy. :-)

[chillin]

I took care of the eyes & did some color adjustment... that's all

[Kraellin]

looks good, chillin.

[tbesek]

That looks great chillin. DO you mind sharing your technique?

Originally Posted by chillin

I took care of the eyes & did some color adjustment... that's all

[chillin]

Originally Posted by tbesek

That looks great chillin. DO you mind sharing your technique?

Most of the eyes were gone, but some edges were still recognizable.
I have partially replaced the damaged parts with new “pics” & blended them in using masking.
Here you can download a “psd” sample.