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ENHANCING IRIS COLOR

It is said that the eyes are windows into the soul.  In that case some of us must have really boring souls, but help is at hand if 
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you want to your eyes to really stand out in photographs and creative photo manipulations.   This tutorial details a simple yet 
powerful technique for altering eye color using basic Photoshop tools and a decent image of an eye. Password:  
 
Step 1: Open up a stock image in Photoshop of any size and/or format.
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The best results for this tutorial usually involve larger images with a
clearly visible iris. If you have a darkly -colored iris, this tutorial may not Log In To Biorust!
give you the results that you need without further work. Please note that
the image to my right was grabbed from the excellent SXC.HU archive -
where there are eye pictures aplenty. Lost Password? || Register

For the sake of this tutorial I will be using a picture in which the iris is
NOT perfectly definable.  Many other tutorials on the web involving eye    
coloring usually use images in which the eye is open wide, making it
easy to select the necessary areas with nothing more than the elliptical Click Here!
marquee tool.  I prefer to offer more useful tutorials, so we will not take 
the easy route here...

Step 2: Using the Elliptical Marquee Tool, make a selection around the
eye.  Don't try and capture the iris perfectly now, as that is not the point 
at this stage.  Just draw a circle around the general area, as I have 
done in the picture next the step 1. Without losing your selection, click
on the quick mask button to enter quick mask mode (its on the bottom of
the tools palette).  You will be presented with a scene in which your 
selection is gone, but in its place is a little transparent area surrounded
by a red -tinged area.  That's our mask.

With the Brush Tool selected, bring out a hard -edged black brush with
100% opacity  and color in the area AROUND the iris.  You will probably 
want to zoom in to ensure that your brush work is as precise as
possible.  When you are finished you will end up with something that 
looks like my example to the left.

Step 3:   Click on the  Standard Mode button to return back to your original

image.  You will now see that you have a nice precise selection around 
your iris.  If you haven't, go back into  Quick Mask Mode and edit some
more!

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Photoshop
Author: alexroderick
Posted: Sep 07th, 11:26am
Activity: 3 replies, 14 views

Step 4: Without losing your current selection, create a new layer on top  Hello from Ramla
of the underlying background image ( Layer > New Layer ) and select it Author: DBSRamla
in the layers palette . Choose a color for the eye, and Edit > Fill the area Posted: Sep 07th, 9:07am
Activity: 1 replies, 12 views
in the new layer with your selected color. Once you have done this,
change the layer's blending mode to Hue... or, if you are using a
Looking for some logo design
greyscale stock, try Color or Multiply. You can then lose your selection.
Author: JasonE
Posted: Sep 06th, 10:34pm
And there you go - an iris with a brand new funky color!   You may need 
Activity: 3 replies, 30 views
to adjust your top layer a little to achieve your ideal coloring, as some
degree of mixing happens with the color of the original iris in the layer Need HELP! how 2 vector the
below.  You can also reduce the opacity of the top layer if your new color  photos
is a little overpowering. Author: Happyger
Posted: Sep 06th, 8:19pm
Activity: 3 replies, 33 views

What happened
Author: turvas
Posted: Sep 05th, 6:42pm
Activity: 7 replies, 88 views

Creative Cow
Author: stevieg
Posted: Sep 04th, 2:09pm
Activity: 0 replies, 44 views

How do I make Sub-Forums in

PHPBB?
Author: -|Neo| -
Variations
Posted: Sep 03rd, 8:35pm
Photoshop presents us with limitless possibilities, only restricted by the power of our imaginations.  Here are a couple of 
http://www.biorust.com/tutorials/detail/163/en/
variations on the above technique, used to achieve stunning and totally unique effects.
Activity: 2 replies, 58 views Page 1 / 3
How do I know when to put
The Immortal: Made famous by films such as Underworld, this eye the HTML tag in a PHP...
 How do I make Sub-Forums in
PHPBB?
Author: -|Neo| -
Variations
Posted: Sep 03rd, 8:35pm
Photoshop presents us with limitless possibilities, only restricted by the power of our imaginations.  Here are a couple of 
Activity: 2 replies, 58 views
variations on the above technique, used to achieve stunning and totally unique effects.
How do I know when to put
The Immortal: Made famous by films such as Underworld, this eye the HTML tag in a PHP...
effect is remarkably simple to create.  Instead of losing your selection  Author: -|Neo| -
in step 4, create a new layer on top of all the others and Edit > Fill it Posted: Sep 03rd, 8:12pm
with white. Run Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur , and select a small blur Activity: 8 replies, 85 views
around 5px in size.   Press OK, and change the layer blending mode to
Overlay.  You may need to reduce the  opacity heavily to achieve a nice
effect, as well as use the eraser tool to remove any excessive
coloration.    
--- Site Resources ---
Now go back to the original stock layer (i.e. the background), Select > Total Tutorials: 205
Inverse your selection, and bring up the Image > Adjustments > Total Downloads:     379
Hue/Saturation dialog. Lower the saturation by 50%.  If all has gone  Linkbase Links: 257
well, you will now have an image with piercing eye color!

The Possessed: If goody -two-shoes is not your style, you may wish to
give yourself an evil eye instead.  In this case, bypass the entire tutorial 
above and leave your stock image as the sole selected layer.  Use with 
brush tool with a solid black tip to paint the area inside the iris a deadly
black, bearing in mind that some reflections have to be left intact or
else you will end up with a decidedly flat effect.   You can easily remove 
color in reflections by selecting them and then running Image >
Adjustments > Desaturate .  Removing the grey fringing is a matter for 
the Brush Tool or the Eraser Tool.

- Tutorial written by Man1c M0g

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LAST 5 USER COMMENTS view entire thread

User:  ross_w_thompson (#42139)
Post #19 of 19
Date: Mon May 21, 2007. 20:15:32

The finished product of this can look as subtle or dramatic as you wish it too be. top stuff.

Reply to this post

User:  Risa (#39397)
Post #18 of 19
Date: Thu Mar 15, 2007. 02:24:07

Love learning new ways to make eyes really pop out! Thanks for another

Reply to this post

User:  saxc (#38483)
Post #17 of 19
Date: Thu Mar 01, 2007. 04:33:44

Awesome, you are really good, again. Now, if this kind of knowledge could just help winning someone like Kate
Backinsale ...hmm .. Instead, keep on persuading my girlfriend (brown -eyed) that her eyes look that good only when she
looks at me.
Thanks, Masta.

Reply to this post

User:  jandercoop (#36040)
Post #16 of 19
Date: Tue Dec 26, 2006. 23:07:29

Quote from Man1c M0g;31407:

Just pick a color in the foreground color palette! =]

Reply to this post

User:  Taipan (#35864)
Post #15 of 19
Date: Wed Dec 20, 2006. 17:28:06

I gave Evangeline blue eyes.

Great tutorial.

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