Newbie Question: Flash-spots in eyes

[expats]

I'm fairly decent with Photoshop but have yet to discover a way to easily

remove / correct white flashed-out spots in eyes. Anyone have an answer to

this query?

 

Thanks.

[gary evans]

They're called catchlights and give a sparkle to the eye.

 

Leave them in! Without them, eyes can look flat and dull.

[richard_cochran]

If you're talking about catchlights, I'm with Gary, leave them in. I suppose if you really want to reduce them, you could zoom in, select them, and use curves or levels to darken the brightest point, or you could clone them out. But they're a natural part of a well-lit portrait. Good painters have been intentionally putting them in portraits for centuries.

<p>

If you're talking about redeye, then of course you should eliminate it, but the best way to do this is to avoid using on-camera flash. If a photo shows redeye, it also shows a host of other problems due to the poor lighting that caused the redeye. Redeye is easy enough to fix in Photoshop (select the eyes and desaturate is one thing to do), but the other problems of on-camera flash are much harder to fix on the computer.

[expats]

I agree to a certain extent, but I shot this from way to close and would like to correct it somewhat.<div></div>

[lester_hawksby1]

If you want to take it down a little in that picture, have you tried masking off all but the pupil of the eye, then using curves to pull the tones there down while keeping the brightest point white?

[JeffOwen]

I used shadows/highlight to quickly help he image but I also took out the catchlights to show how lifeless the portrait becomes without them.<div></div>