Retouching.ro

There are many online tutorials that teach you how to change eye color in a portrait but, in most cases, the result is highly unrealistic. My technique is a bit more complicated but I think the result is worth the effort.

Now, in order to explain I’ll be using a stock photo provided by http://chiosxe.deviantart.com/. I chose this photo for the pretty texture of the iris, which is always a plus when you’re aiming for a good result.

First of all, I always find it easier to work with color on a grayscale base and, in this case, this proves even more useful since most natural eye colors such as green, blue, steel are light and highly desaturated colors. So in order to capture all the nice detail in the eye and lose the natural hazel, I’m gonna go to the Channels tab and click on the Red channel. Notice how the iris looks very light and crisp in this channel.

Next I’m gonna select the whole thing with Ctrl+A, copy it with Ctrl+C and go back to our Layers tab. There I’ll create a new layer on top of the original image and paste the contents of the red channel.

Depending on the photo you’re using, other channels might hold better detail; I just pick Red most of the time because it works best for me. Also, you should always be careful with the Blue channel since it’s always the grainiest and, in certain cases, applying it over your image might ruin its original texture.

Next I’m gonna apply a black mask over the grayscale layer, by holding down the Alt key while pressing the little mask icon in your Layers tab. That’s gonna hide the grayscale version and it’s okay, I only need the iris, which I’ll bring back by painting over the mask with a white brush with slightly soft edges. I don’t want the brush to be too hard or the difference will show and it’s gonna look ugly.

At this point I found the iris to be way too light for the overall image, so I Ctrl+clicked on the mask to select the iris that I just outlined and then applied a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer (the selection thus becoming a mask for this layer too). So, after darkening the iris a bit and applying a bit of contrast, my iris looks like this:

Cool, huh? It would work nicely for a steel blue eye but me, I’m not nearly done with it.

I’m gonna make my eye green, so next I’ll have to select one of the masks yet again and use the selection for my next adjustment layer: Color Balance. This is a highly subjective method see as a Hue/Saturation layer set on colorize and using a very low opacity will probably do the same. So you can to use whichever you find easier, it’s not essential. The point is to only add a tiny bit of color, never go overboard with saturation. Remember: less is more. This is one of the main secrets with changing the eye color and the most typical mistake I’ve seen. If you want a richer look you can try playing with brightness and contrast to make it a bit darker, but don’t overdo these settings either. Real eyes always have soft, desaturated colors, they’re never sapphire blue or emerald green, no matter how colorful they seem to the naked eye. Also, eyes that are too contrasty or too bright will look out of place on your subject’s face.

So, in order to achieve my greenish eye color I use the Color Balance sliders in the Midtones tab, while leaving “Preserve Luminosity” ticked. I’m gonna share a little secret about my green eyes: amusingly enough, I never shift the slider towards Green. What I do instead is go quite far with Yellow, depending on the image – I actually went all the way with this one – and then slide it a bit towards Red, to achieve that warm jade-like hue. I tend to stay away from pure Greens since they don’t look very realistic. Plus, my whole image is reddish, which brings us to another important tip: always take into account the overall aspect of the image; that means hue/saturation/brightness/contrast etc. The eye color needs to blend in and look natural.

Now is the time for the minor adjustments, also known as those little details that make all the difference. The third important tip: you should never color the pupil or the reflections in the eye. Now, see as the pupil (the black dot in the middle) isn’t pure black and the highlights are never pure white, any color adjustment you apply on the eye will also affect them too. And that makes the color look fake. The problem here is of great subtlety, because you don’t want them to be completely gray either, see as that also makes them look fake. So what I usually do is this:

I untick my color layer, to get a clear view of what I’m doing, then go back to my grayscale one, to work on its mask. There, I set my brush on black, 50% softness and 50% opacity, and click in the middle of the pupil, covering most of it but not going over the edges. What that does is bring back half of the original color in the pupil, which is actually the color of the surroundings reflecting in the eye. That helps a lot with what I’ve mentioned earlier, which is making the eye blend with the whole image.

Next thing I need to do is mask the colorized parts and for that I go back to my color layer and make it visible again, then, on the mask, I set my brush to 100% and click with white in the middle of the pupil as well as in the middle of every single highlight speck. Again, I don’t go over the edges too much – the transitional area may have a little color to it.

Random tip: You can see your masks by Alt+clicking on them.

Now that I’ve brought this closer to reality, it’s time to add the final touch. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but most blue or green eyes have a little bit of brown or yellow around the pupil, not much, but enough to make it look interesting. In order to do this, I could bring back some of the original brown of the eye, or I could just fashion a brown of my own. I chose the latter since it gives me more flexibility.

In order to achieve this effect I create a new Color Balance layer and exaggerate the Red this time, with about half as much Yellow as well. This will apply the change to the whole image, which is not what I’m after, so I invert the mask with Ctrl+I and then paint with white to get the shape that I need. I use my brush with 100% opacity and 100% softness, because the color needs to fade away naturally into the “green”. My brush is usually positioned in the middle of the pupil, but going over the edges to about 1/3 of the iris. After I click and apply the color, I need to go back over the mask, with black this time and a hard brush with 100% opacity, in order to erase the color that I’ve applied over the pupil. This effect needs to go only on the iris.

Now, my result was a bit too bright so I selected the mask (it said pixels are only 50% selected, that’s okay, don’t worry if you get that) and I darkened it with a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. Yours might look great on the first try, it’s just useful to be ready to do some little tweaks when the result is not exactly what you wanted.

Also, as I’ve already mentioned, you can always use Hue/Saturation instead of Color Balance. You can even use a normal layer with the Blending Mode set on Color and paint on it with a solid color of your choice (though that’s a bit tricky and I don’t really recommend it). You can also experiment with blue eyes, purplish eyes or different greens. My only advice is – unless you’re aiming for a fantasy look – keep it toned down and always keep in mind the basic rules of realism.

This is my final result. I also reshaped the iris a bit to correct some flaws, and emphasized the dark ring around it with a soft Burn tool set on Midtones and 5% exposure. Roll over the image for before/after.

I hope all of this was helpful! Have fun photoshopping!