How can I quickly fix or prevent pet-eye in dogs when using flash?
Asked 1/23/2013
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Flash photos of dogs can show bright green, blue, amber, or red reflections in the eyes, similar to human red-eye. Human red-eye tools often don’t work well on pets, and painting the eyes by hand is slow and hard to make look natural. What’s the quickest way to correct pet-eye in editing, and are there better ways to prevent it when shooting indoors with flash? I have older Photoshop versions and other basic editors available.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
7
You can darken the pupils in a separate layer and tweak the transparency. You'd want to tweak a bit more on the edges of your drawn part to make it less fake. If you have a photo with the natural color, colorpick that and draw with that color instead of black.
This tutorial just uses black, but shows the general procedure:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/redeyeremoval/ss/peteye.htm
I don't think it is good enough, though.
However, it is best not to get to the point where you need it. No flash is great when you can, but there are ways to use a flash too. Get a flash that can be rotated. Face it up to the side. Or get a cable/wireless trigger and hold it off to the side.
Here is an example of (top) swiveled flash (bottom) cable flash off center
Originally by user11455. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user11455
13y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
The fastest reliable approach is usually prevention, not repair. Pet-eye happens for the same reason as human red-eye: on-camera flash reflects back from the eye into the lens.
Best fix while shooting: move the flash off the camera axis. Use a flash that tilts/swivels and bounce it up or to the side, or trigger a flash off-camera with a cable or wireless remote. Even shifting the light source away from the lens greatly reduces the reflection.
If your camera has a red-eye reduction mode, try it. The pre-flash can help by making the pupil/iris close down before the main flash.
For editing, there usually isn’t a perfect one-click pet-eye tool. A practical method is to darken the pupil/eye glow on a separate layer, then reduce opacity so it blends naturally. If possible, sample the animal’s natural eye color from another photo and paint with that color rather than pure black, softening the edges so it doesn’t look artificial.
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