"Glowing Eyes" in dogs...

[RPCrowe]

I have been asked by several friends on an Internet dog forum how to reduce or eliminate the glowing eyes of dogs when shooting with a P&S camera with onboard flash. I don't shoot with a P&S so I can't experiment to reduce that eye glow.

Of course, "glow eye" is caused by the flash being too close to the lens and the flash being reflected back from the retina. The "glow eye" is basically the same as red-eye for humans which is caused by the same set of circumstances. However, it doesn't appear that the red-eye reduction on a P&S will correct the "glowing eye" effect in dogs. Additionally, it doesn't appear that the automatic red-eye correction in many editing programs will recognize the "glowing eye" in dogs and correct it.

Obviously I told the people that the very best way to eliminate "glowing eye" would be to use a flash that you can bounce. However, that would require a hotshoe on your camera which many P&S cameras do not have.

Another possibility might be to increase the ambient light enough so that the dog's pupils would contract. However, many people do not have the capability of increasing the ambient light in their homes to that level. An inexpensive Home depot work light would suffice but, they are darned dangerous around animals due to the heat generated.

The only way I can think of to eliminate the "glowing eyes" might be to not have the dog looking directly into the camera when shooting the picture. This of course would completely solve the problem but, lots of folks like to have the dogs looking into the camera.

Is there any way you can think of to bounce or somehow diffuse the on camera flash of a P&S to prevent glowing eye?

I have tried to reduce glowing eyes in dogs by using the clone stamp in Photoshop. This sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Additionally, most people have only the editing program that they got with their camera or some other freebie image editor.

Is there any way that you can reduce/eliminate glowing eye using a simple editing program?

[710 Studio]

I have been asked by several friends on an Internet dog forum how to reduce or eliminate the glowing eyes of dogs when shooting with a P&S camera with onboard flash. I don't shoot with a P&S so I can't experiment to reduce that eye glow.

Of course, "glow eye" is caused by the flash being too close to the lens and the flash being reflected back from the retina. The "glow eye" is basically the same as red-eye for humans which is caused by the same set of circumstances. However, it doesn't appear that the red-eye reduction on a P&S will correct the "glowing eye" effect in dogs. Additionally, it doesn't appear that the automatic red-eye correction in many editing programs will recognize the "glowing eye" in dogs and correct it.

Obviously I told the people that the very best way to eliminate "glowing eye" would be to use a flash that you can bounce. However, that would require a hotshoe on your camera which many P&S cameras do not have.

Another possibility might be to increase the ambient light enough so that the dog's pupils would contract. However, many people do not have the capability of increasing the ambient light in their homes to that level. An inexpensive Home depot work light would suffice but, they are darned dangerous around animals due to the heat generated.

The only way I can think of to eliminate the "glowing eyes" might be to not have the dog looking directly into the camera when shooting the picture. This of course would completely solve the problem but, lots of folks like to have the dogs looking into the camera.

Is there any way you can think of to bounce or somehow diffuse the on camera flash of a P&S to prevent glowing eye?

I have tried to reduce glowing eyes in dogs by using the clone stamp in Photoshop. This sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Additionally, most people have only the editing program that they got with their camera or some other freebie image editor.

Is there any way that you can reduce/eliminate glowing eye using a simple editing program?

There is a free program available to everybody called, GIMP. It does a lot of the same things that Photoshop does, but not everything. One thing it CAN do is create various layers. I have reduced glow eye by masking out the dog's eyes and layering a black brush over the glow. Set the layer's transparency to a setting that reduces the glow eye, but yet looks natural. This probably won't completely CURE the glow eye, but it will certainly make the picture look more acceptable.

Do a Google search for GIMP, download, install, and you're on your way!

[RPCrowe]

Thank you for this tip. I will pass it on...

[AssassinJN]

Make sure the camera has the red-eye reduction turned on regardless, as some P&S use a short burst of flashes before hand to attempt to contract the eye as well.

The reason most automatic red-eye reduction actions don't work is because they look for spots of red and reduce the red saturation in those areas of the photo. Obviously this won't work for pets since their eye biology is different and reflects more of a green light (IIRC this is due to the fact that they can see in IR and so their eyes absorb the red light better).

As far as correcting the issue after the fact; you can manually edit the photo in the same way that the automated red eye reduction works. In photoshop at least, it is easy to select the area around the eyes (or create a layer mask of the same) and to apply a curves/color balance/etc to reduce the green/cyan/blue levels as needed to eliminate the colored light reflected. Though this wouldn't help those who only use the free editors that come with their cameras.

The last thing I can think to suggest, is to select the night portrait mode, which disables the build in flash (or do so manually). And pray the pet sits still and their hands are stable enough to take the picture without it.