Another Photoshop tutorial: lightening the eyes

There are many ways to lighten the eyes in Lightroom in Photoshop. 

In Lightroom you can do it with a local adjustment (exposure, shadows and sharpen).  But you can also do it in Photoshop. In this blog I'll show you the Quick mask mode to lighten up the eyes and after that I'll show you how to sharpen the eyes.

For this tutorial, I used a picture of Pixabay

 

1. Open the photo in Photoshop
2. Duplicate the background layer (Ctrl/ Cmd J)
3. Hit Q to select the quick mask tool
   
   
   
4. Hit B to select the brush tool and set your front colour to black
5. Paint over the eyes
   
   If you paint outside the eyes, hit the X key. Now you can erase the part that you don't want to be selected. Hit the X key again to select the brush. 
6. If you have selected the eyes and are satisfied with that selection, hit the Q key. Now the eyes have turned into a selection.
   
7. Create a new adjustment layer and choose Curves. 
   
8. Select the white layer mask and invert it (Ctrl / Cmd I). The layer mask is not black and hides everthing excepts the selection (of the eyes)
9. Move the Curves to the left to make the eyes brighter. But don't overdo it, keep it natural. 
   

Now the eyes are a little brighter. There are of course many other ways to select the eyes. But using this quick mask method is very easy and gives good results.

Off to do some sharpening of the eyes now. 

To do this make a stamp visible layer by using CMD OPT SHIFT E on a mac or CTRL ALT SHIFT E on a PC. This creates a separate merged and flattened layer form all visible layers in your layers panel, whilst keeping the original layers intact. Be sure the stamp visible layer is on top.

Select the sharpen tool. 

Now 'paint' over her eyes to sharpen them.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great picture. Even though it was shot slightly from above. 

I did some dodge and burn and I removed some frizzles in her hair. Working on this picture, I got kinda curious to see what this would look like in B/W. So out comes Tonality! 

I really love the way Tonality makes B/W images. I loaded this picture into the Macphun's Tonality Pro to convert it to a B/W portrait. Which one do you prefer? 

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