Hello and welcome to this episode of
Denny's tips! Today I want to teach you a
retouching technique that not a lot of
people pay attention to. I'll be teaching
you how to enhance the eyes by enlarging
the pupils in Photoshop. The pupil size
can apparently make your subject more
appealing, in some places like Korea and
Japan. It's quite common to find people
buying fake contacts that make your
pupils look bigger.
There's also a study done a long time
ago where they show two sets of photos.
They both are the same stuff, except that one
have the pupils dilated. People prefer the
photo with the dilated pupils and when
they're asked why, they can't explain it.
There are a lot of ways to retouch
portraits; enlarging the pupils is just
one of them, but sometimes the smallest
part of your photo will have the biggest
impact. So, if you're interested
keep watching this photoshop tutorial
and I'll show you how it's done.
For this tutorial, you should be working
on a hi-res photo where you can see
details in the eyes. So, we're first going
to start by making a selection of the
pupil and then we're going to enlarge it.
In the toolbar, select the elliptical
marquee tool, zoom in really close into
one eye like this, you want to be able to see
all of the details while editing. To make
a selection of the pupil, drag from
the center of the pupil and if you hold
the "alt or option" key it'll drag
from the center like this, then hold on
to the "shift key" which will give you a
perfectly round circle. We have our
selection, and to preview how it looks
let's fill it with white. You can do it
quickly by pressing D on your keyboard,
to reset the foreground and background
colors and then pressing "ctrl or command"
backspace to fill it with white. The
edges look quite hard.
So, let's undo the filled by pressing
ctrl or command said then press shift F6
to bring up the feather selection tool.
This let's soften the edges of your
selection, enter something small
sometimes even half a pixel is good
enough. Fill this selection again to
preview it, and if it looks good we can
duplicate the layer. Before we begin
transforming it's a good idea to confer
to layer into a smart object. So, right
click on the layer then choose convert
to smart object - press ctrl T or command
T on macs to use the transform tool then
while holding alt and shift or option and
shift enlarge the pupils like this. When
you're done press enter to apply the
transformation. Zoom more and see how it looks,
obviously mine looks way too big and
unnatural so I'm going to transform it
back down like this.
Now, usually when you're transferring up
and down like this it's going to reduce
the sharpness but because this is a
smart object you can actually resize it
as many times as you like and you won't
lose any image quality and that's just
one reason why you should use Smart
Objects whenever you can.
Speaking of smart objects, here's another
reason why you want to use it; if we look
closely at the pupil it's blurry and the
noise detail became quite splotchy. We
can fix this by adding some noise which
will artificially sharpen it. To do this,
go to "Filter" - "Noise" -> "Add Noise" zoom in so
that you can see details and then
adjust the noise like this. You want a
noise pattern that subtle and looks like
something natural out of your camera. Now
if your image is black and white, you'll
want to check mark the monochromatic option.
This basically just makes me noise
black-and-white otherwise, just click OK
to apply the changes. Look into the new
layers panel you can see that because we
apply this filter onto a smart object,
your filter became a smart filter which
is fully editable. You can double click
back on the filter to change these
settings
anytime you want. Another feature of
Smart Filters is that you can double
click here to bring up the blending
options and you can lower the opacity
from here. So, I'm gonna sent mine to about
fifty percent. Now the noise that we added
has a very minimal effect to the overall
image. And when you zoom out you probably
won't even notice the difference at all.
This is just the techniques that's catered
towards high-end retouchers who care a lot
about image quality and maintaining
the consistent sharpness and noise level
throughout the entire photo.
Anyways, right now the pupil looks fake,
it really looks like someone just
painted a dot over it. To make it look
more realistic, we need to restore the
reflections. If you look closely at the
eyes here, you'll notice that your
reflections and catch light hasn't
completely covered by our fake pupil. If
we change the blending mode to something
like overlay, it'll look better but you
also get this double pupil effect you can also see
that the reflection has a color that doesn't
look very real as well. So we're not
going to use the overlay blending mode,
we're going to mask it out with a blend
if settings right click on the layer
then choose "blending options", on the
bottom here you'll find a "blend if"
settings.
We're going to use the underlying layer
here and if we drag the white slider
towards the left you can see the
reflections coming back. Right now, the
edges of the reflection are quite hard,
so, to soften it hold the alt or option
key then drag the white slider towards
the right.
The slider will detach in half and you
can fade out the edges like this
click OK to apply the changes and we're
done. It looks much more realistic once
we restore your reflections. We're done
with one eye now it's time to work on
the other eye. I'm going to go through this
quickly because you already know the steps but
along the way you'll learn some pretty
useful tips and tricks. First, I'm gonna
select background layer and make a
selection out of the pupil. Apply the
same feather settings by pressing shift + f6 the
previous setting that we used, should
still be here so we can just click OK.
Press ctrl or command J to duplicate the
layer, convert it into a smart object by
right clicking on the layer and
selecting convert to smart object press
ctrl or command T for the transform tool
resize it to about the same size as the
other pupil. If the pupil is extending
past the eyelid you can fix it by
clicking on the add layer mask button in
the layers panel, select the eraser tool
and if your foreground and background
colors are the default black-and-white it
should paint your layer with black. Now
if you like to paint your layer mask with the
brush tool you'll need to swap the
colors by pressing X or that black is
your foreground color. Anyways, I want to
erase very carefully around here. My
brush hardness is set to a hundred
percent so that the edges look hard and
to soften it go to properties panel and
then adjust the feather setting. Compared
to setting your feather in your brush
settings
it's not that big of a deal, it's just
good practice because it's always easier
to blur or something than it is to
sharpen it back.
Next we're going to restore the noise,
but first make sure that you've selected
back to layer by clicking on the layer
thumbnail, otherwise if you have the layer
mask selected, we're going to be adding
noise or layer masks and it looks like
you're doing nothing.
Go to filter noise add noise, your
previous settings should still be here so
just press ok. In the layers panel,
double-click on this icon here to bring
up the blending options, use the same
opacity setting that you use in the
other pupil. For mine, it was fifty
percent and finally we're going to
restore the reflections. You can just
copy and paste the layer style by
right-clicking on the other layer and
selecting copy layer style. Right click
back on the previous layer then choose
"paste layer style". The reflection is
restored and we're done.
So, there you go that's how you dialte
pupils in Photoshop. One thing to notice
here is that everything we did, is not
just non-destructive; it's fully edible
as well. You can always go back to the
layers and change these settings to
anything you want.
Here's what the image looks like before
and after,
so what do you think? Is it more appealing
or is it not that big of a deal?
Maybe it's a placebo effect, anyways, I
want to know what you guys think. So, let
me know in the comments below.
Guys, thanks for watching this video if
you found it helpful, hit the like button
also if you want to learn some more
portrait retouching techniques,
check out this video I made a long
time ago on how do we touch skin in
photoshop, there are more techniques such as using
yellow channel frequency separation,
dodging and burning and more. Anyways,
thanks again for watching guys I hope
you guys have an awesome day and if you
haven't already please hit the subscribe
button below!