Photoshop tutorial: Enhance eyes

As we want to work on the eyes and not the whole face zooming in to the eye area will make the editing process easier. There are several ways to do this: One, click the Magnifying tool and then click on the image to zoom in, two, press Z (On a PC) on the keyboard to select the Magnifying tool and then click on the image, three, go to the View menu and click zoom in or four, press the Control key with the +/= key.

Select the eyes

Select the Magnetic Lasso tool, make sure it's set to 'add to selection' (see right image)  then click around one of the eyes adding points until the line joins up. When the line turns into 'moving ants' repeat the process on the opposite eye.

Increase the brightness

Create a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer by clicking on the black & white circle at the bottom of the layers palette and select Brightness/Contrast. Start by adjusting the contrast which you do by either typing a value in the box or by moving the slider up and down. Each image is different but the contrast on this image was changed to 75. Next, adjust the brightness. Again, the amount you input will differ from image to image but for our example we used 29.

Sharpness

Repeat the selection process with the Magnetic Lasso Tool then with the portrait layer selected go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask and increase the amount by inputting a number into the value box or by adjusting the slider. If preview is ticked you'll be able to see when you've sharpened the image enough. When you're happy click OK, deselect the eyes (Select>Deselect) and zoom back out to view your newly improved portrait. Find the tripod and camera bag to suit your needs at www.vanguardworld.com