Whiten Eyes With This
Photoshop Elements Tutorial

In this Photoshop Elements tutorial we'll see how to whiten eyes for a subtle change.

It may be a subtle change but it's one of those enhancements that give your photographs that indescribable something extra.

People might not look at it and think that the eyes are nice and white. But they will think wow this is a really nice photo.

STEP 1
Open an image you want to whiten the eyes on.

STEP 2
Zoom in and select the white area of the eyes.
Zoom in on the eyes by using the Zoom tool from the toolbox (it looks like a magnifying glass). I like to zoom in at 200 or 300 percent.

Use the Lasso tool to select the white areas of both eyes. Remember to hold the shift key to add to a selection.

After you have your selection made go up to the Select menu and choose Feather… In the dialog box that appears enter 1 in the Feather Radius field and click OK. By feathering the selection the transition to the surrounding area will be more gradual.

STEP 3
Create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer.
Go to the Layers palette and click on the Create adjustment layer icon. It's the half white/half black circle. Choose Hue/Saturation.

The Hue/Saturation dialog box will open. Click in the Edit field where it says Master. Choose Reds and release the mouse. This is where we get the red out.

Leave the Hue field at 0. For Saturation drag the slider to the left until the red in the eyes turns gray. For my image I had to go to -70.

Next drag the Lightness slider to the right to slightly lighten the area. Don't go too far because we will be giving the eyes another hit of Lightness later. I went to +35.

So that took care of the red part. But there might be lesser amounts of other colors in the whites of the eyes. To eliminate them change the Edit field at the top of the dialog box from Reds, back to Master.

Now slide the Saturation to the left until any color cast is gone. If you don't actually see any other color in the white areas just bring the slider to about -30 or -40.

Go to the Lightness slider and drag it to the right until the eyes are nice and white, but not completely blown out. This is a lesson on how to whiten eyes, not make them glow! I went to +30 for my photo.

Now click OK to commit the changes. Remember that because we are using an Adjustment layer you can easily adjust your settings later if you decide you want to.

STEP 4
Try lowering the Opacity.
This step is optional but it just takes a minute and could make your results more natural.

Go to the Layers palette and in the Opacity field click on the tiny triangle to use the slider to reduce the Opacity of the Layer.

This will allow some of the original color of the eyes from the Background layer to show through. Play around with the Opacity and see if you like the results better. If not, just leave the Opacity setting at 100%.

Here's a look at the before and after:

That wraps up this Photoshop Elements tutorial on how to whiten eyes. See more Photoshop Elements tutorials by clicking here .

Until next time,
Rick

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