Locked lesson.
About this lesson
This is a good way to select and change the color of complex objects, such as an eye, in a very realistic way. Great for model photography, or just playing the ‘what if’ game.
Exercise files
There are no related exercise files for this lesson, or we cannot provide them due to copyright issues.
Quick reference
Topic
Set up an eye selection so that you can pay more attention to the finer points of the color without having to go back and start again.
When to use
This is a good way to select and change the color of complex objects, such as an eye, in a very realistic way. Great for model photography, or just playing the ‘what if’ game.
Instructions
Make a selection of the eye
- Use the Pen tool: use the selection handle to adjust the curve
- Right click on path and select 'Make a Selection'
- Feather your selection 3 pxs
From the layer panel, create an adjustment layer to change the eye color
- Select Adjustment Layer: Exposure
- Drag the gamma slider to the Left: 1.6
- Select Adjustment Layer: Hue and Saturation
- Switch on colorized check box: set value to 210: bring down saturation to 12.
- Select Adjustment Layer: Levels: Shaddows 20, highlight 210, mid-tones: .90
Tip
Use the colorize slider in 'Hue And Saturation' to change the color to anything you want. Who needs fancy contact lenses?
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- 00:04 Hey everyone! After looking through some of the questions I've received lately,
- 00:07 there are a few of you who want to know how to change eye color. In
- 00:10 specific: brown to blue eyes.
- 00:11 There are a few things that make the transformation from
- 00:15 brown eyes to blue eyes quite difficult.
- 00:17 Many results turn out quite unrealistic, usually because the effect is overdone.
- 00:22 There are a few steps I'm going to take to ensure this is not the case.
- 00:26 The first thing that needs to be done is the selection.
- 00:31 There are a dozen ways of creating a selection in Photoshop,
- 00:34 but I think for this example I'm going to use the Pen tool to make a nice curve
- 00:38 selection.
- 00:47 When you're outlining the eye, don't worry if the path spills into the eyelid,
- 00:50 you can deal with that later with layer masks. Now that my path is set, I'm going to
- 00:55 right click on it and then make a selection from the path.
- 00:56 It's very important to feather your
- 01:00 selection or else you are
- 01:01 going to get a pretty sharp result when the adjustments are added.
- 01:04 I'm going to feather it by three pixels. Good. Now that we have our selection,
- 01:08 let's start adding adjustments, and for those who are familiar with my videos,
- 01:12 you probably already know that I'll be using adjustment layers rather than straight
- 01:16 adjustments.
- 01:17 This insures that we can make changes later on if needed.
- 01:21 The first adjustment we are going to add will be exposure.
- 01:22 If you look at a brown eye and a blue eye side by side,
- 01:26 you'll more often than not notice that the blue eye will be lighter,
- 01:29 so when exposure adjustment comes up, we want to drag the gamma slider to the
- 01:33 left, around 1.60,
- 01:34 which will decrease the range of your contrast, and in return
- 01:38 give you a little bit of a brighter eye. Now you're probably asking yourself
- 01:42 ”why not just increase the exposure?” Well we could do that, but we want to knock out
- 01:46 some other shadows in the eye right now,
- 01:48 and then later we will add a levels adjustment to give us complete control
- 01:52 over shadows, mid tones and highlights.
- 01:54 Either way, you get the same result in the end, but if you're looking for
- 01:57 more control,
- 01:58 this is the method I found most helpful. Now that the eye is a bit brighter,
- 02:01 let's add some color. Now you might have noticed that our
- 02:05 selection is no longer active.
- 02:06 When that's the case, hold down Command or Control and click on the layer mask
- 02:10 to bring back the selection.
- 02:11 With that done, let's add a hue and saturation adjustment layer.
- 02:15 The important option here is the colorized check box at the bottom.
- 02:19 This will allow us to completely change the color of the current selection.
- 02:23 The hue slider determines the base color.
- 02:26 I'm going to choose a light blue, somewhere around 210 for the value.
- 02:30 Now in its current state, it's a little bit too saturated,
- 02:33 so let's bring down the saturation to 12. Perfect! We're almost there.
- 02:37 The eye is looking a little flat at the moment, and as
- 02:40 we messed around with the gamma a little bit earlier,
- 02:43 we need to bring back some the depth of the eye. Let's go ahead and make our
- 02:46 selection one more time.
- 02:48 And then we're going to add a levels adjustment layer. Now this is what I
- 02:51 meant earlier when I said I'd rather have complete control over my shadows,
- 02:54 mid-tones and highlights.
- 02:56 Here, I can create depth by sliding my shadow sliders inwards,
- 02:59 let's say to around 20. I can move my highlight slider to the left, around 210
- 03:04 and then slightly move my mid-tone slider to the right. Now that's looking quite
- 03:09 nice. Because we used an adjustment layer, you can easily go back and make any
- 03:12 changes you wish.
- 03:13 If we want green eyes, it's as simple as changing the hue.
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