Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I'm going to show you a technique that will
brighten and enhance the eyes' irises, as well as change their colors. This works especially
well for irises that are originally dark. Open a photo of a person you'd like to use.
I downloaded this one from Shutterstock.com. Make a copy of it by pressing Ctrl + J on
Windows or Cmd + J on a Mac. Let's zoom into one of the eyes. To do this, press "z" on
your keyboard to open your Zoom Tool and drag a rectangle over the eye. To reposition it
on your screen, hold down the Spacebar and drag your image. Open your Brush Tool and
make sure the Hardness is 0% and the Opacity and Flow are 100%. We'll adjust the size in
a moment. Make sure your foreground and background colors are black and white, respectively.
If they aren't, press "D" on your keyboard. Click the Quickmask icon, so we can brush
in quickmasks over the irises. To reduce the size of your brush, press the Left bracket
key. Now. brush across the inside perimeter of the iris and make sure there are no holes
in the quickmask. To quickly fill it in, open your Paint Bucket Tool and left-click inside
the quickmask. Press "B" to open back up your Brush Tool and brush over the empty areas.
Hold down the Spacebar to slide the image over and brush over the inside perimeter of
this iris. Press "G" to open your Paint Bucket Tool and left-click inside the quickmask.
Press "B" again to open back your Brush Tool and brush in the rest. If you need to zoom
out a little, so you can see both eyes on your screen, press Ctrl or Cmd and the minus
key. Press "Q" to make the quickmasks into selections and then invert the selections
by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + I. Click the Layer mask icon to make a layer mask of
the selections, next to the active layer. Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer.
Go to the Layer mask and hold down Alt or Option as you drag a copy of it next to the
empty layer. Click on the empty layer to make it active and change its Blend Mode to Overlay.
Make sure white is the foreground color and make the Opacity 50%. Increase your brush
size by pressing the right bracket key. Now, brush over the bottom half of the iris a few
times to brighten it. Then, brush over the bottom half of the screen left iris to brighten
it. As I toggle back and forth, you can see that the color is brighter and and more vibrant.
Click the thumbnail of Layer 1 to make it active and go to Filter, Sharpen and Unsharp
Mask. This will sharpen the details within the iris. l'll choose an Amount of 40%, the Radius
is 10 pixels and the Threshold is 0 levels. Depending on the size, resolution and characteristics
of your photo, experiment with these settings to get just the right amount of sharpness.As
I toggle back and forth, you can see the difference. After you apply Unsharp Mask, if you want
to make it look less sharp and have less contrast, just reduce its Opacity. Next, we'll change
the eye color. Make the top layer active and click the adjustment layer icon. Choose Hue/Saturation.
Go to the Layer Mask and drag a copy of it on top of the white layer mask at the top.
If you see this warning to replace it, click Yes. Click the icon next to the layer mask
to make the adjustment layer active and drag the Hue slider to the right and left to change
the eye color. If you want to tone down the color, reduce the Saturation.
I'll reduce mine to minus 46. To see your entire document, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!