How can I convincingly add color to very dark eyes in Photoshop?

Question

In cosplay portraits, models sometimes can’t wear colored contacts, so I’m asked to add the eye color in post. Most eye-color tutorials assume the iris already has visible detail, but with very dark brown or nearly black eyes, simply shifting hue leaves the iris looking flat and unrealistic.

My main issues are:
- dark irises don’t show much visible texture, so a straight color overlay looks like a solid disk
- catchlights and reflections should stay neutral, not take on the new iris color
- the pupil should remain black while the iris changes color

What’s a convincing Photoshop workflow for recoloring very dark eyes while preserving a natural look?

user85449 · Accepted Answer

The problem is not coloring the eye, the most important thing is to extract the shadows and mid-tones from the iris. In lighter eyes, the difference between the color of the iris and the pupil is clearly distinguishable, but not in dark eyes since they have the same tonal value. In the example below, prior to coloring the eye, there is a step to extract the mid-tones with levels.

Working on the right eye:

After making the eye selection, on a levels adjustment layer, move the mid-tones to the left to lighten them and the shadows to the right to differentiate shadows and mid-tones:

Smooth the mask with a Gaussian blur:

Add a color fill layer using the same mask with the chosen color and change the layer blend mode to Color:

How can I convincingly add color to very dark eyes in Photoshop?

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