Red Eye Removal in Photoshop Elements

Hey there!  It’s Alli here with a quick and easy tutorial on getting rid of those red eyes in your photos to help enhance your layouts.  The easiest way to get rid of red eyes is to try to avoid getting them in the first place by using as much natural light as possible.  I know this isn’t always an option (like at night or indoors a darker room), but when you can take the photo without using your flash, you will end up with fewer photos with red eyes.  If you are using a DSLR, try changing your ISO to a higher number to avoid using the on camera flash.  Open the windows to let in natural light or try to arrange the people so they are closer to a window with lots of light too.  But if you tried getting more natural light or changed your ISO and still ended up with red eye, here are some ways to remove them.

This first tutorial shows removing red eye in PSE 7 but should work the same in other versions of PSE.

1.  Open your photo in PSE using file<open.

2.  Click on the Red Eye Removal Tool in the tool bar.

3. Depending on how small my subject is in the photo I like to zoom in using ctrl + until I can clearly see the eyes.

4.  At the top of the tool bar you will see the option to click Auto.  This will have PSE correct your red eye for you when you click the button.

5.  If you would like a little more control then you can use the pupil size & darken amount buttons to customize your red eye removal.

6.  I left the pupil size at 50% for this photo because his pupil is about 50% but sometimes a little  adjustment here to match how much pupil is showing can make a difference.  I changed the darken pupil from the default 50% to 89% because in this photo when I left it at 50% my son’s eyes look almost the same color as his pupil and I wanted the pupil to be darker.  The higher you put this number the darker the pupil will become.

7.  When you hold your cursor over the eye you will see it makes a +.  When you are ready just click once on the pupil and you will see the red eye disappear!  It really is that easy!  Here is my final image.

In CS4 it is just as easy (and should work the same on other versions too).

1.  Open your image in PS.
2.  Click on the Red Eye Tool in the tool bar (it is with the Healing Brush Tools and the Patch Tool so you may have to right click to find the Red Eye Tool).

3.  Once again I use Ctrl + to zoom into my photo.

4.  Place the + over the red pupil and click for PS to automatically fix the red eye using the default 50% settings.

5.  If you want to make custom adjustments then change the settings at the top to make the pupil a little darker or bigger.  Again, I set mine at 85% to make the pupil a little darker.  Can you tell the difference?  Play around with that setting on your own photos to see how you like it.

Have fun playing around with the red eye tool which is a really easy way to make those photos ready to scrap!