Red eye

digitalrightnow · Aug 31, 2006

I bought a HP e327 digital camera, it take really high quality photos, however I can't get the red eye out. I took some pictures of my family this evening and they all had red eye. i tried a couple of the options but to no avail. I tried turning off the flash but they were blurry I tried setting it to take pictures with flash to go off when needed but still red eye. I tired using paint shop to fix this but I find the finished product really doesn't look natural. Do any of you have any tips or suggestions?

ksmattfish · Aug 31, 2006

I'm not sure of the best way to fix red eye. I just try to avoid it in the first place, and when I can't the red eye tool in Photoshop CS2 seems to do a pretty good job. You could try selecting the red part, and then adding cyan.

Red eye is caused by the flash being too close to the lens axis. Cameras with built in flashes tend to be red eye monsters. If your flash is closer than 6 inches to the lens, and the area your subject is looking at is dark, redeye is almost guaranteed. You either have to get the flash away from the camera body, or make the area so bright that your subjects' pupils contract.

rmh159 · Sep 1, 2006

Yeah I really don't think there is any in-camera way to get rid of red eye. The red eye reduction flash just adds light like Mattfish said and will reduce the pupil size but there will still be some red eye.

As far as I know the only 2 guaranteed ways to get rid of red are post-processing and being able to get the flash further away from the lens.

If anyone has other ideas I'd be curious to know but to the best of my knowledge... that's it.

Digital Matt · Sep 1, 2006

If you pick up a copy of Photoshop Elements, it has a red eye tool.

rmh159 · Sep 1, 2006

Does anyone know how to do it in PS CS? I believe CS2 has the tool specifically named Red Eye Removal and CS has a similar tool though it's not specifically named and is kind of buried.

Also, in general how do you guys / gals remove red eye in post processing (aside from the tool).

Digital Matt · Sep 1, 2006

Make a new layer, set its blend mode to "color". Using the eyedropper tool, select the eye color by clicking just outside the red eye. (There is usually a small band of the original eye color". Paint with this color on the new color layer. It should turn the red into the eye color. At this point I like to darken that area. I usually control click the new layer, which makes a selection out of these areas, and then use a levels adjustment layer to darken it.

ksmattfish · Sep 1, 2006

To color correct for too much red add cyan. This results in a more natural look than converting the red to black.

digitalrightnow · Sep 2, 2006

Where can I get a copy of Photoshop Elements? Also is there any software out there that might be made speciffically for the purpose? I just noticed that I can reduce redeye pretty well with the software that came with the camera, however it would be nice to be able to do it with another program.

Digital Matt · Sep 2, 2006

You can buy photoshop elements just about anywhere that sells software, from Best Buy to Amazon.com. You should have some kind of full featured photo editing software, if you are serious about digital photography.