Photobie Forum

Cheng · Site Admin Joined: 11 Aug 2005 Posts: 104

Photobie provides enough tool for you to do Red Eye Removal. The process is relatively easy, and similar to other software such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. The articles for how to use these software for Red Eye Removal can be found here:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photoshop/ht/apsredeye.htm

Here we show you much detailed example for doing Red Eye Removal with Photobie.

First, we use sample red eye image from above website

Step 1: resize the original image to 4 to 6 times as large. Due to the performance issue, you need to copy paste only the selected red eye portion to create a new small image if your original image is bigger than 400*300, then enlarge the new small image.
Here is enlarged image:

Step 2: use the oval selection tools and set the selection Mode to Union and select the best fit red region. (You may need to use other selection Mode also to adjust the selected region)

Step 3: click on the second option of the clone menu on layer manager to get a new layer with only eyeballs.

Step 4: use color balance adjust tool on the layer manger tool bar to adjust the color. make gammar higher, saturation lower, contrast higher, brightness lower.

Steop 5: In general, the step 4 will give you relative good effect, and all you need to do next is to use the Smudge tool on the left side Paint tool bar to smudge the edges and make the color natural, you will find this smudge tool very useful. In fact, I use it all the time.

However, it is possible the inner white part of the color adjusted layer does looks very good and you may want to use the original color for that iinner part. In this case, please follow the step 6, otherwise, jump to step 7.

Step 6: if you want to use original inner white bright part, you need to select it first, clear original selection and use single or union selection mode for this selection. Then cut only that region from current new layer through the tool on Layer Manger Tool Bar.

and here is cuted effect:

Step 7: Smudge over the iris and the edges to make it looks natural. Be aware that each smudge will create a new layer, if you want undo the last smudge operation, simply delete that new layer (undo button doesn't apply here):

while it goes, you may want to check how it looks like for original sized image, then you can use zoom tool to zoom it back to original size and check the result. Remember to zoom back to working size for next operation.

Step 8: If you are satisfied with your final result, then simply click the flatten button on the Layer Manager Tool Bar to finalized the work.

then resize it back to original image size and save it.

How do you like it?

Keep in mind that, while using smudge, you may want still to use Paint tools such as solid Pen or draw shape tool to adjust color. You have total control of it. There are some softwares that claim they can do auto red eye removal, I really don't buy it, you have to manual adjust to give it perfect result. You will love it when you see how it looks like.

Guess what? after this tutorial, you will be a real professional with Photobie and know how to leverage Photobie for advanced image editing.

So give it a try!

--Cheng