BEFORE

AFTER FIXING IT IN PHOTOSHOP

How to open Closed Eyes Using Photoshop

Many a time subjects shy of camera tend to close their eyes the moment shutter button goes down. This can happen due to many reasons like timing mismatch, subject not knowing what the photographer is doing, intensity of flash, etc. But whatever the reason, the person photographed with eyes closed will certainly not like you,

nor will you be happy with that kind of photographic results even if you’re not professional photographer. What is the solution, then? Re-photograph the subject? Tell her sorry or simply tear off that photograph once it’s printed? You could be doing one of these things, but a bolder approach is to try to correct such photograph. And you can do it in simple steps using Photoshop.Here is how you can go about it: (I use Photoshop CS3 version, but I think you can do this tutorial in any version, even the older ones)

1. Go to the file menu, click open and double-click the photograph you want to correct.

2. Once the photo opens in photoshop, hit (Ctrl+J) to duplicate the image. You can of course duplicate it by Layer menu>Duplicate layer. (Unless required for specific purpose, make it a habit of working on the duplicate copy of the photograph)

Let me tell you that Photoshop doesn’t have any tool that can actually open a closed eye. Tools like Liquify filter are there, but they cannot do eye surgery. So what we have to do here is to copy the open eye of the subject from another photograph and paste it on her closed eye. If you don’t have any other photograph of the subject then look out for the somebody else’s eye. The only condition is that open eye to be copied and pasted must have similar orientation and must match the face of the subject on whom we want to do this eye surgery. In the above example, I used a different person’s eye and pasted it on to the closed eye of the subject.

3. Go to the file menu, click open and double click on the photo of the person you want to copy the eye from.

4. Grab the selection tool like polygonal Lasso and select the eye to be copied. Don’t worry about precision of the selection. Just make sure you select the important portion of the eye.

5. After selecting it, hit ctrl+C to copy one eye and minimize the photograph.

6. Open the original photo on which you want to do surgery and click ctrl+V to paste it.

7. The copy of eye selection will now appear on the photograph. Use move tool to drag it onto the closed eye of the subject.

8. You’ll usually find that copy of eye will not match the size and shape of the eye in original photograph. To fix this up, click edit>transform>scale. After this, try scaling the eye. If required you can also slightly rotate it using edit>transform>rotate.

9. Once the eye is properly positioned, you’ll still have to do some tweaking. The selected portion shows up making it look like an appendage.

10. Use eraser tool to erase the unwanted portion around the eye. With little manipulations, you can get it right.

11. Repeat the procedure with another eye and voila, you have both eyes of the subject open.

12. Correct the other parameters like brightness, contrast and color to your liking, adjust sharpness and save the photo.