Since I finally addressed your oft-asked question of “How do you get the backgrounds in your photos to be blurry?” a litany of new photography questions have been posed of me.
Of all the questions you have asked me lately, one of the more repeated is “How do you make the eyes pop in your photographs?” In fact, if you follow me on Twitter, you might remember almost a week ago when I Tweeted a question to you regarding what photography post you’d like to see next.
And, according to most of you, the eyes had it.
So here I am today, to unveil the simple yet fantastically fun method I use to add sparkle to eyes in my photographs. You all add so much to our lives, the very least I can do is share my photography tips with you.
For me, more is usually better. More twinkle, more color, more laughter, more contrast. More kids.
But that’s a whole ‘nother post.
I’ve long had a love affair with color. I used to dye my hair hot pink before I was married, had a bright purple closet when I was growing up and I write on my calendar with 78 different Sharpie colors.
So when I discover a way to get just a little bit more color into my photographs, I jump at it. I love my children, but when I toy with photos of them to make them appear in Technicolor, I love them just a little bit more.
Okay, that’s not true. But almost. Or something.
Hey, MckMama, enough with the drivel. On with it!
Well, fine then! No need to get all worked up. I just like to talk is all. Anyway, here you go.
Oh, but before I start, I beg of you to remember my disclaimer that I am by no means a professional photography teacher. I am largely self-taught, simply having dinked around with Photoshop until I liked what I saw. I also use Lightroom for exposure and color stuff, but stick with Photoshop for fine tuning.
Today’s lesson, the eyes have it, falls into fine tuning. I hope you enjoy it!
The first step is simple. Start with a photograph of a subject whose eyes you want to enhance. I chose this photo I took of my friend Aubrey’s daughter.
Open the photograph in Photoshop.
Zoom in on the eyes. Select the lasso tool. I like to set the feather to about 5 pixels. Using the lasso tool, select the irises of the eyes.
Because of my aforementioned love of color, the next thing I like to do is drop down to adjust hue/saturation under adjust color under enhance.
Grab the middle saturation toggle. Slide it up to the right a little. Be careful not to do it too much or the result may be a bit extreme. I like bright and bold, but not out of this world.
Under enhance, drop down to adjust lighting and then over to adjust brightness/contrast.
Bump up the contrast the teeniest bit. If you’re feeling really wild, you can even move the brightness up a touch, too.
For good measure, I next like to select sharpen which is off of sharpen under filter.
Voila! Before. After.
And now, the eyes have it!
Hello McMama,
I am reading through your old photography tips and am loving every one of them. I don’t think you post about photography very often anymore (umm…I could be wrong, but I don’t think so anyway), and I just wanted to let you know that you have at least one reader who is salivating for more!
I’m sure there are many others out there who would love to hear more from you on the subject of photography too.
Anyway, keep up the good work! I love your blog! And your kids are ridiculously cute!!
Best,
Momma Goose
Hi MckMama! I just tried this and I don’t have a “sharpen” button under filter. Why is that?
To sharpen (instead of a button)…
Duplicate your layer. Using the new layer (a duplicate image of what you want to sharpen), go to “Filter”, “Other” then “High Pass…”.
It will turn your new layer gray with an outline of your image. Adjust so that you can see the main outline fairly clearly but don’t go too far or you’ll end up having a lot of noise. It’ll depend on the image but probably around a 5 to 10 (pixel radius). Click “okay”.
Now you should have a gray outlined image. Go to your ‘layers palate’ (make sure the High Pass/gray layer is highlighted) and use the drop-down menu to change it from “Normal” to either “Overlay”, “Soft Light” or “Hard Light”. You can erase areas that you don’t want sharpened, adjust the opacity, etc, just like any other layer!!
Now you have a sharpened image!! It actually works better this way then just having a “Sharpen” option!! :c)
Hi! What version of photoshop do you have? I have seen Photoshop Elements and then just Photoshop and I was trying to decide which one to get. Thanks!
P.S. Your pictures are abolutely beautiful and I really enjoying reading your blog. I am the mom to twin boys and whenever I need some mommy inspiration I always seem to find it on your website. So thank you!
Natalie
I’d like to thank you personally, from the bottom of my heart for introducing me to the addition that is Photoshop.
As a photography minor in school, I still have not learned pretty much any of Photoshop as I am only entering my sophomore year. With you simple tricks, I have transformed my photos and turned even the best of my photos into better ones. So thank you, truly, I love your amazing photography and hope I can one day take pictures even half as gorgeous as yours.