Beautiful Eyes (Photoshop Elements)

“I can see it in your eyes,” my husband often says. Most times he’s referring to that look of orneriness that I often possess. I just can’t help it!!

Eyes reveal so much about us. Poetry abounds with claims that our eyes are a link to our soul. One quick look into the eyes of my husband or children can cause me to fall in love with them all over again. Eyes are powerful!

In this tutorial, you and I will put the focus of the photo on the beautiful eyes of your family. So let’s get started!

(Note: This technique can also be accomplished using a layer mask, but for the sake of simplicity, we’ll use the following method.)

STEP 1: Prepare

For this tutorial, you’ll need to find a photo that has nice crisp eyes. You will also want to make sure there is no red eye in the photo you choose.

• Open a photo of your choice (File > Open).
• Choose File > Duplicate. Click OK. The experts tell us (from experience) to never work on the original copy of a photo.
• Close your original photo so you don’t get the two mixed up.
• Press Ctrl J (Mac: Cmd J) to duplicate the photo layer. A good rule to follow is to create a new layer for each adjustment you make to a photo.

STEP 2: Desaturate

In this step, we will take the color out of the photo.

• Make sure the top layer is active.
• Choose Enhance > Adjust Color > Remove Color
• Zoom in on the eyes of your photo.

ZOOM TIP
Do you have a scroll wheel on your mouse? If you do, you will want to utilize it for zooming in Photoshop Elements. To do this: Click Edit > Preferences > General. Check the box “Zoom with Scroll Wheel.” Click OK.

STEP 3: Reveal

In this step we will reveal the color of just the eyes.

• Make sure the top layer is active.
• Get the Eraser tool.
• From the Options Bar, choose a soft round brush.
  • Click on the drop down arrow in the Options Bar to get the Brush Picker.
  • Click on the drop down menu at the top of the Brush Picker and choose Basic Brushes.
  • Double click on Soft Mechanical 45 pixels from the list of brushes.
• The Mode in the Options Bar should be Brush and the Opacity should be set to 100%.

BRUSH TIP
Put your brush over the photo. Your brush size (indicated by the circle) should be about the size of the pupil in your photo.
To make your brush larger, press the Right Bracket key on your keyboard.
To make it smaller, press the Left Bracket key.

• In a circular motion, erase over the irises and pupils in your photo. You should now see eye color.

TIP
If you erased too much, you will see parts of pink skin showing up. To fix that, press Ctrl Z (Mac: Cmd Z) to undo, and try it again.

STEP 4: Merge and Save

If you are satisfied with the look you’ve just created, then you are ready to finish it up.

• Right Click (Mac: Ctrl Click) on the top layer and choose Merge Down.
• Save your photo.

You are now ready to drag your photo to your scrapbook page!

I would love to see your scrapbook pages using this tip! Scrapper’s Guide has a gallery set up just for Tip of the Week creations, so get scrapping and show me what you’ve got!

Credits: Scrapbook page by Jen White. Made with Lucky Ducky by Miss Mint available at Scrappers Guide.

Download a PDF version of this “Beautiful Eyes” tutorial.

Windows: Right click on the link and choose “Save Target As” or a similar command.
Mac: Click on the link to download the file.

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