‫In this video we're gonna take a look at ‫how to enhance your subject's eyes.
‫Before we start that though, let's just ‫take a
‫look at the initial image that we're ‫working with.
‫Okay, so it's another shot of my daughter.
‫And what I've done first is I've converted
‫this to black and white using the channel ‫mixer.
‫Now if we activate that you can see
‫I've used the black and white with blue ‫filters.
‫[UNKNOWN] blue channel and brings out her ‫facial details.
‫So I can see all her freckles.
‫And it's light in her eyes, cuz her eyes ‫are blue.
‫What I then did, was I added this curve.
‫Now before we activate it, let's just take ‫a look.
‫So you can see here, I've deepened the ‫shadows.
‫So this point is towards the bottom right ‫from the intersection of light.
‫Midtones are brighter.
‫Highlights are brighter still.
‫So let's activate that layer.
‫And we can see we got a much more striking ‫image to work with.
‫The problem of course is her eyes are ‫quite dark.
‫Now the reason for this is this is a ‫natural light portrait.
‫I wasn't using a reflector.
‫I kinda didn't have time to position her.
‫And, so what's happening is the light is ‫falling from above.
‫And you can kinda see the light there ‫catching her, her
‫right eyebrow, the top of the top of the ‫eyebrow there.
‫And you can see a catch in the end of the ‫nose.
‫So her eyes are in partial shade.
‫They're shaded by her brows.
‫Okay, so what we need to do is we need to ‫lighten her eyes.
‫So, based on what we've colored
‫previously, this should be relatively ‫straight-forward.
‫We just need to create a curves adjustment ‫there, brighten her eyes and
‫then add a mask to block the effect from ‫the remainder of the image.
‫Now in essence, that's what we're gonna ‫do, but it's easy to get this wrong.
‫And let me show you why.
‫Okay, what I've got here is an adjustment ‫that I've previously created.
‫And I've called it codes 1, I've activated ‫it.
‫This stage because I haven't altered the ‫curve, nothing is happening.
‫Now lets take a look at the layer mask I ‫created.
‫I've Alt clicked the layer mask thumbnail ‫and what you
‫can see now is I've kinda drawn round her ‫eyes.
‫Now I haven't done this particularly ‫precisely, but I've
‫used the Polygon Pursuit tool, gone around ‫the edge.
‫And I've feathered this selection by one ‫pixel.
‫Okay, so lets see what we can do by going ‫back to the curve.
‫I'm just gonna track the midpoints, just ‫brighten her eyes overall.
‫So there's a slight change, we turn it on ‫and off.
‫You can see that horizon now looking a ‫little bit better.
‫Track it a bit further.
‫Maybe that's a bit too far.
‫Okay, they're looking, we're looking ‫better still.
‫So again, let's turn this on and off so we ‫can see where we're getting to.
‫Okay, so that's an improvement.
‫However, there is a problem.
‫Let me drag this a little bit further and ‫I can show you what I mean.
‫Okay, so now things are starting to look ‫a, a little bit unnatural.
‫And if we drag it a little bit further, we ‫start to look supernatural.
‫Where does it look as though the light is ‫coming from?
‫In this instance, it looks like, we've lit ‫her head from inside.
‫The only plausible way a person could look ‫like this.
‫As if we had a light source inside their ‫head.
‫The reason for that, is all we've done is, ‫we've target this area of the image.
‫We've targeted this eye, we've targeted ‫that eye.
‫But of course, it isn't just those areas ‫that are dark.
‫Okay, so why is that the case?
‫As I mentioned, the light is falling from ‫above.
‫So this is shading her eyes.
‫But as you look around eye, you can see ‫that this area is also quite shaded too.
‫So, if I really brighten her eye, all I
‫am gonna do, is make this look extremely ‫unnatural.
‫Okay, lets start again and let me show a ‫better way of doing this.
‫Okay, so [INAUDIBLE] adjustment layer.
‫And before doing this, I'm just going to ‫zoom in a bit on her eyes.
‫So can see exactly what we're doing here.
‫So, let's just get them both, both in ‫shot.
‫Okay, so now, we can see both her eyes.
‫What I'm gonna do first, is I'm going to ‫create
‫a curve adjustment layer while paying ‫attention to her eyes.
‫So, I'm gonna ignore the rest of the ‫image.
‫Now, this stage is gonna get too bright.
‫So I'm just gonna kinda drag this up.
‫Now at this stage I don't want to
‫add any contrast, I just wanna make things ‫brighter.
‫So I'm just put I've got a single control ‫point and I'm brightening the mid tones.
‫Cuz the highlights are getting brighter ‫too and the shadows are getting dark too.
‫But we're not increasing the contrast in a ‫significant way.
‫See if I go to there that looks a little ‫bit better.
‫If we jump out now, of course the image as ‫whole looks far too bright.
‫So I'm gonna now do a, I'm going to the ‫masks power tool.
‫The Properties tab and I'm gonna click ‫Invert.
‫So this is blocked the effects.
‫Okay, now I'm gonna zoom in again and I'm ‫gonna start with this eye here.
‫Now I'm gonna select the eraser and I need ‫a smallish brush.
‫So for this image let's say somewhere ‫around 92 and
‫I'm gonna leave this time I'm gonna have a ‫soft brush.
‫So I don't want a hard edge here.
‫I'm gonna use soft brush, and I'm gonna ‫paint over this area of the image here.
‫So what I'm doing at this stage is ‫something
‫quite similar than what I did with curves ‫one.
‫And softer brush so that it feathers in at
‫the edge and it won't look quite as ‫unnatural.
‫Okay, so that's the first eye.
‫Let's now just go over and do this second ‫eye.
‫[BLANK_AUDIO]
‫So, again, I'm just using the eraser to ‫erase
‫the mask that we created in the previous ‫step.
‫So, let's just take a look at that now.
‫So, it's not especially precise and I'm ‫actually gonna turn up the opacity now.
‫Cuz I want a full effect here.
‫Okay so go over that again.
‫It's always a good idea to check your ‫paste it before you start.
‫You can find you're spending a long time ‫making changes otherwise.
‫So let's go back to the the first eye
‫and again we're gonna erase, gonna erase ‫that detail.
‫So go back to the image now and we'll zoom ‫out.
‫It's always a good idea when you do,
‫when you're making specific changes to a ‫selected area.
‫Jump back out again, so you can look at ‫the image as a whole.
‫It's very easy to stay focused on the ‫particular item
‫you are adjusting and that on it's own ‫will look great.
‫But it will wrong to the context of the ‫rest of the image.
‫Okay, so, there is the first step.
‫Lets make it a little bit brighter still.
‫Now, as I mentioned, the problem with her ‫eye, the reason it dark, is that
‫there is kinda light fall off, kinda down ‫from her brows to the top of right.
‫And most noticeably under this eye as ‫well.
‫So what I need to do is I want to lighten ‫those areas too.
‫Now what I don't want to do is lets just ‫go back to the mask.
‫I don't want to lighten them quite as much ‫as her eyes, you know if I
‫do, lets make the brush a little big
‫bigger, if I do that's gonna look too ‫bright.
‫So if I do that that's gonna look a little ‫bit unnatural.
‫So lets just use the history pallet to go ‫back a bit there.
‫What I'm do is I'm going to change the ‫opacity
‫of the brush and I'm going to go down to.
‫If I change the opacity of the eraser,
‫we'll be down to about somewhere around ‫30%.
‫Then what I'm going to do, is I'm going to ‫draw around this area.
‫Again, Slightly too much for a first pass.
‫I'm gonna take that down again and I'm ‫going to go down to 18%.
‫So let's start with this eye, let's just ‫gradually lighten underneath
‫there and then lighten underneath here and ‫up around the brow.
‫Now I can build up the opposite effect so ‫I can, I can
‫punch more of a hole through the mask by ‫sorta repeatedly doing this.
‫Now what I'm going to do is I'm gonna zoom ‫in.
‫Notice there's a darker area here.
‫So I'm gonna make my brush a little bit ‫smaller.
‫And it's gonna loo, just lighten that bit ‫up
‫a little bit more than the rest of the ‫area.
‫Okay, so let's lighten that up.
‫Let's jump back out again to make sure ‫that
‫looks natural in terms of the image as a ‫whole.
‫Maybe now I've lighten this bit a little ‫to much.
‫So let's just go around the edge of that ‫one
‫and see if I can make it a little more ‫natural.
‫Okay, so that's looking a little bit ‫better.
‫There's a dark patch there as well.
‫So, let's just lighten that a little bit ‫more.
‫Okay, so while I was building the arc, the ‫effect didn't look too pronounced.
‫We were making gradual changes because ‫we've
‫set the opacity of the arrays to 18%.
‫If I now turn this layer on and off ‫though, you
‫can see it has quite a profound effect on ‫the surrounding area.
‫Let's, let's zoom right out, and that's so ‫we can see the image as a whole.
‫So what we've got now is we've got a major ‫change
‫to the image, but we've kinda blended it ‫in reasonably seamlessly.
‫I'm just gonna go to the brush and, it's ‫looking a
‫little bit bright across this area here, ‫so I just want to.
‫[SOUND] Go across there and maybe just ‫dark that down a little bit.
‫Okay so, if we go back to this adjustment, ‫you can remember
‫the curve looked like this, so we've, with ‫massive increase in brightness.
‫Let's now go to this one and let's adjust
‫the curve so it looks pretty much the ‫same.
‫Now its too bright, but if we, its not ‫implausible.
‫This ones wholly implausible and this ones ‫a little bit implausible.
‫So lets just step that back a bit.
‫We don't want this area under eye to be ‫brighter than
‫the remainder of the image, because that's ‫gonna look unnatural too.
‫So lets just pull that back a bit.
‫And there, what we've done there is we've ‫created a very simple mask.
‫And there's no precision involved here.
‫In fact kinda, the sloppier we were the ‫better.
‫So we zoom in on kinda, this eye.
‫We started with the, the, the whites of ‫her eyes in the iris.
‫And then we gradually fade the effect ‫around here.
‫And this darkest spot here, we lighten up ‫a little bit more.
‫So the full effect of curves five goes ‫through.
‫Because it's white here, partially here, ‫and a little bit more here.
‫So if we go back again, what we can see ‫now is this is kind of a seamless change.
‫You can't really tell, that I've made an ‫adjustment.
‫With this one, if we kind of even, if we ‫step it back,
‫even if we step it back a little bit, this ‫just doesn't look right.
‫It just looks far too bright.
‫And there's this kinda harsh edge along ‫her eye.
‫So it just looks unnatural.
‫This one, what we've done is we, is we've ‫feathered the selection in.
‫So there's a layer mask one more time.
‫So we've feathered it in, and we've ‫brightened the
‫area around her eye, in addition to her ‫eye.
‫So we've created a reasonably natural ‫looking result.
‫It's kinda heading towards being a little ‫bit over
‫the top and I actually like it in this ‫instance.
‫Okay so having done that of course, we can ‫then add further adjustment layers.
‫So look what happens when I turn on curves ‫three.
‫Keep an eye on her irises particularly ‫particularly this one, so her left iris.
‫What you'll see is I've increased the ‫contrast.
‫So this is a simple s-shaped curve.
‫If we take a look at the layer mask it's ‫kinda not very precise mask.
‫It kinda just targets her irises and adds ‫a little bit of contrast.
‫Now we used one adjustment lens for both ‫eyes here.
‫Now sometimes you might need to use two.
‫So for example, if one eye is quite a lot ‫darker
‫than the other it might make sense to use ‫one curve adjustment.
‫For one eye, and then another curve for ‫another.
‫But in essence, this isn't a difficult ‫process.
‫The only thing that you need to be ‫conscious
‫of is that you do need to feather the ‫selection.
‫Peoples eyes are dark because of the way ‫light falls.
‫So it's not just the whites of their eye, ‫the irises and the pupils that are dark.
‫It, it's the whole eye and the surrounding ‫area.
‫So once you bear that in mind, what you ‫can do is you can
‫use this technique to make quite profound ‫you know, this is a big change.
‫And again, we, we can nudge it with a ‫little photo if we wanted to.
‫It's a big change, but it looks quite ‫natural.
‫If we just adjust the eye no matter what ‫we do.
‫Well, maybe if we just do it a little bit, ‫it doesn't look too bad.
‫You know, maybe that's better than the ‫original image, but its
‫certainly no where near as good as that ‫type of change.
‫This is a lot more striking.
‫So just bear it in mind and when your ‫kinda
‫rubbing out these areas here if your using ‫your eraser tool.
‫Just set it to a low opacity and you can ‫gradually build up the effect.
‫Okay, so that's how to enhance your ‫subjects eyes.
‫Let's just go through it one more time ‫using another image.
‫Okay so let's take a look at our second ‫image.
‫Okay, so, let's go back to the starting ‫point.
‫Here's, here's the original image.
‫Now what I've done is I converted this to
‫black and white using the black and white ‫tool.
‫And I used the modified version of the red ‫filter.
‫So, kinda what I did here was bring down ‫the red.
‫Before we go on, one thing when you're ‫working with
‫eyes, it's worth bearing in mind what ‫color are they?
‫So it looks like her eyes are blue.
‫So if I select the eyedropper tool, and we ‫go to her eye,
‫what you'll see in fact is the values ‫there are: 39, 40, 39.
‫And over here 41, 42, 40 so her eyes are
‫in fact a grey, we have no color in her ‫eyes.
‫So during the black and white conversion ‫process we can't make them brighter.
‫Had her eyes been blue we'd been able to ‫use either
‫the blue or blue and cyan sliders to ‫lighten her eyes.
‫So in this instance we couldn't do that.
‫Okay, what I did then was I added this ‫curve.
‫It's not, it's not a profound curve.
‫I've moved the white point bit to expand ‫the tonal range.
‫Take a look at the histogram at the top ‫right here
‫and you'll see there's kinda gap in the ‫data at the top.
‫So there's room for maneuvering the ‫highlights.
‫I've also brightened the highlights here, ‫mid tones
‫a little bit brighter and shadows ‫marginally darker.
‫So there's kinda our starting point.
‫It's a cute image she had a lovely ‫expression but her, her eyes are too dark.
‫Okay, so let's just zoom in a bit and ‫we'll go
‫through exactly the same procedures we did ‫with the previous image.
‫So again, I'm kinda zooming in.
‫I'm gonna look at both eyes, cuz their ‫both similarly illuminated.
‫She actually looks quite strange there.
‫But anyway.
‫Okay, let's, let's make the curves ‫adjustment.
‫One thing we can do is, I'm gonna evaluate ‫this image this time, cuz what
‫I want to do is make sure I make the ‫whites of her eyes brighter.
‫Now if you look.
‫These are the whites of her eyes, but ‫they're
‫actually mid way between the mid tones and ‫the shadows.
‫They're actually extremely dark.
‫So I'm going to do, is I'm going to add a ‫control point in there.
‫I'm not worried about her eyes at this ‫stage.
‫We'll kinda see how, how they fall out as ‫we make adjustment.
‫But what I'm doing now, is I'm adjusting
‫the image, and I'm specifically watching ‫her eyes.
‫So, her face is getting very bright.
‫I'm not worrying about that.
‫I'm just concentrating on how her eyes ‫appear.
‫I've selected, just drag that across,
‫okay, so maybe, maybe somewhere around ‫there.
‫What I'm then going to do, as we did
‫with the previous image, I'm going to ‫invert the mask.
‫We'll trim back the curve, because we may ‫want to change it in a moment.
‫And I'm gonna select the eraser.
‫Now, this time her eyes are quite small in ‫relation to the eraser.
‫So I'm gonna use a slightly, slightly ‫smaller brush.
‫But I'm gonna use exactly the same ‫technique.
‫I'm just gonna rub out, and again I'm ‫gonna check my opacity this time,
‫and I'm gonna set it to 100%, so it can be ‫a little bit quicker.
‫And let's just rub over these areas of the ‫image here.
‫Okay, so what you'll see is an immediate ‫improvement.
‫Again, I don't need to be too precise ‫here, I'm feathering
‫the selection on the edge because I'm ‫using a soft brush.
‫So I don't need to worry about being very ‫precise.
‫So let's do the second eye.
‫And we're pretty much done I think, let's ‫just check with our layer thumbnail then?
‫Okay, so you can see I missed a little ‫bit, so
‫lets just rub that out and let's go back ‫to the image.
‫Okay so this stage, let's jump, let's jump ‫back in
‫again; so we can evaluate the image as a ‫whole.
‫What you'll see now is the image has a lot ‫more impact, her eyes look natural now.
‫Before they looked dark, and again, this ‫has to
‫do with the way the light's falling on ‫her.
‫But once we add this adjustment, she looks ‫complete, a whole lot better.
‫What we haven't done with this one so
‫far, though, is we haven't lightened ‫around her eyes.
‫And in this instance, we don't need to do ‫that quite as much.
‫Let's just jump in again.
‫Perhaps we could, just lighten above this ‫eye, a little bit.
‫So, what I'm gonna do again is I'm gonna ‫take the opacity
‫brush down now, cuz I want, I wanna blend ‫in this, this effect.
‫Make my brush a little bit bigger, and
‫let's just lighten above the eye a ‫fraction.
‫[UNKNOWN] I don't think we have to do as ‫much,
‫perhaps maybe just lighten down there a ‫little bit more.
‫Let's, let's do that.
‫Let's take a look at the other eye.
‫I actually think, maybe just, maybe just a ‫fraction there.
‫We certainly don't need to make anywhere ‫near as much of
‫a adjustment as we do from the shot of my ‫daughter.
‫So let's jump back here again.
‫Okay, so let's click that on and off.
‫Okay, so that looks really good now.
‫So we started with a cute image, but now ‫we have kinda perfect one.
‫It's worth bearing in mind, you know, ‫people say
‫that the eyes are the window to the soul.
‫They're also often the key to a good ‫portrait.
‫This one here her eyes just look very ‫dark.
‫It's almost as though she's squinting.
‫Her she looks like she's paying attention.
‫She looks like she's staring at you.
‫She looks like she's engaging with you.
‫It makes the image a lot more striking.
‫Okay, so very quickly, let's just go ‫through this one last time.
‫I'm gonna jump back to the guy from ‫[UNKNOWN].
‫Okay, so let's zoom in.
‫Let's actually zoom out a little bit.
‫Okay, so I've got a curves adjustment ‫layer here.
‫I'm gonna brighten his eyes.
‫Again, I'm paying attention to his eyes, ‫I'm
‫not worrying about the remainder of the ‫image.
‫I'm going to Masks.
‫I'm inverting the mask, and I'm using the, ‫an, a eraser, with opacity 100% initially.
‫And I'm gonna kinda just lighten his, ‫lighten his eyes first.
‫Okay, so we want those to be quite a bit ‫brighter.
‫What I'm then gonna do is I'm gonna turn ‫down the opacity.
‫And I'm gonna use a slightly larger brush ‫to add a,
‫add a bit of light, a bit of light around ‫his eyes.
‫Now, I don't want to make a huge change ‫here.
‫You know, the fact that his eyes are kinda ‫partially shaded.
‫Suits this portrait.
‫Kinda adds to his character.
‫But let's see if this does make a slight ‫improvement.
‫Okay, so we jump out now.
‫Okay, there's the image before we made the ‫adjustment.
‫There's the image with the adjustment.
‫And again, I think you'd agree it makes ‫the image a whole lot more striking.
‫Okay, so not a difficult technique, and.
‫But it is a powerful one, and it is one
‫you should bear in mind when creating ‫black and white portraits.