4. Typically, black is the best choice for a replacement color. The area that is affected by red-eye is actually the pupil, which is the opening of the iris of the eye and this is always black when you look at another person, no matter what their eye color is. Press "D" on the keyboard to set the default colors which should give you black in the foreground swatch. If you want to use a color other than black, click once in the foreground color swatch to open the Color Picker and choose a color by moving the vertical Hue slider and then clicking in the large color square.

5. Place the crosshair inside the brush circle on the red areas and click once to begin replacing portions of red with the replacement color. Keep in mind that since we have set the mode of the brush to Color, it will replace the color, but not the brightness, so what you will get should be a desaturated gray, rather than a full black. Drag over the red areas with the crosshair to remove the red and achieve results similar to those in the images below. If all the red isn't removed, try increasing the Tolerance level in the options bar to correct more shades of red.

Removing red-eye with the Color Replacement Tool.

The Color Replacement tool is great for removing the red and, when used with black, replacing it with a neutral color. You may find, however, that the pupils may still look too light and washed out. Removing red-eye is often a two step process that involves first removing the red and then darkening the pupils until they are closer to the dark, near black tone that they should be.

The red-eye has been fixed, but the pupils are still a bit too light.

6. There are many ways to achieve the darkening effect. One quick technique that's also fairly simple is to use the Burn tool to brush over the areas that are too light and darken the tones there. In the Options bar, set the Range to Shadows and the Exposure to a relatively low value of 20% so the effect doesn't happen too fast. Choose a brush size that is appropriate for the task.

The Options bar for the Burn Tool.

Carefully brush over the pupil with the Burn tool to darken it a bit. Don't darken it too much so that the pupils become totally black, as that can often create an an effect that is just as unsettling as the red dragon eyes...the appearance of a souless zombie with black pools for eyes. The object is to make the eyes look real and not spooky, unless, of course, you are purposefully trying for a ghostly effect.

The pupil on the left has been darkened using the Burn tool.

TIP: Make sure you do not retouch the white catch light that appears in the eyes. It is natural to see a reflection of the light source in a person's eyes, whether that source is a nearby window, the sun, or studio lights. Although it may be tempting to get rid of this, it looks more natural for these reflections to be present.

Red-eye removal: before and after.

The Color Replacement Tool is only available in Photoshop CS. On the following pages, we'll show you a couple of red-eye fixes that will work in earlier versions of the program.

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