Technic to bring out the "detail' in dark eyes: asking too much?

Hi All,

As all my kids have dark eyes; I just wonder what is the technic to give the photo some 'detail' in the dark eyes?

Off camera flash? Ring flash?

if you don't have any success try this link as an alternative... http://www.digital-photography-school.com …op-steps-to-eyes-that-pop

focus.pocus wrote in post #11454448
if you don't have any success try this link as an alternative... http://www.digital-photography-school.com …op-steps-to-eyes-that-pop

Photoshop always is good option
Thanks

focus.pocus wrote in post #11454448
if you don't have any success try this link as an alternative... http://www.digital-photography-school.com …op-steps-to-eyes-that-pop

This is what I do and it works great.

That's essentially what I do, but I somtimes make a new layer, let the blend mode to overlay, select a small round brush and add a little more color to the iris (choosing a complementary color from the color picker) by brushing it on then adjusting the opacity of the layer. I'll also clone out the small red veins in the whites of the eye and remove any red color cast (select the white areas of the eye>New Layer via Copy>Adust Hue/Saturation>Select Reds>Adjust Saturation to taste then merge the layers.

Do you have a flash? I'd say a flash is a good place to start. By flashing, you create catch lights which give the feeling of life.

x_tan wrote in post #11454283
As all my kids have dark eyes; I just wonder what is the technic to give the photo some 'detail' in the dark eyes?

If by "dark eyes" you actually mean dark brown or nearly black irises, the Dodge tool won't give you the best results. The problem is that irises have texture--usually radiating from the pupils. A really dark iris will be too underexposed to have recorded the texture, so when you dodge it, you just get an ugly, unnatural lighter tone--perhaps even noise.

The trick is this: First, notice in expertly lighted portraits that the eye will have a catchlight (reflection of the light source) and exactly opposite of the catchlight, the iris will be illuminated in a crescent-moon pattern. The light has penetrated the cornea at the catchlight point and shines light a flashlight beam on the opposite side of the iris.

So, you don't want to lighten the entire iris all around, especially not on naturally dark eyes. You just want to lighten a crescent of iris opposite the catchlight (even if you had to draw a catchlight in white with the Brush).

But you want texture in that iris. Get the texture from the eyebrows! Use the Stamp tool and set its source point up in the eyebrow near the nose where the hairs are fairly sparse. Set the Stamp tool to about 25-30% opacity, set the brush width at its softest and as wide as the iris (not the entire cornea, just the width of the iris ring). Then brush semi-transparent eyebrow texture onto the iris. Although it doesn't radiate from the pupil the way natural iris texture does, it is acceptable. Just give it a couple of even strokes to do the trick.

Also, if you do have to paint in catchlights, you have to be very careful. Even the slightest difference in the locations of the catchlights between the two eyes will make the subject look wrong. What I do is this: I fix the eye that is most opened perfectly, then copy and paste that cornea precisely over the cornea of the less-opened eye (set that layer to temporarily to Difference so that you can position it exactly). Then erase the areas that are covered by the upper and lower lids.

Thank you!!! This is an old thread but I was just coming to look for this information. My kids have really dark, almost black eyes. Even when I get catchlights there is still only a small pinpoint of light. Dodging the eyes in PP just makes their eyes look cloudy and weird. I will try the stamp tool.