Photos © 1999, Darryl C. Nicholas, All Rights Reserved

Remember the old days when retouching eyeglass glare meant sending the image out to a retouching artist or, if you did it yourself, spending about an hour or more with wet dyes carefully blending colors and carefully adding dye in thin layers to gradually build-up the density? Well, those days are gone forever for this photographer. Now, I do all of my eyeglass retouching on the computer with Adobe's Photoshop V5.0. It takes a fraction of the time, and the quality is superior to anything that I was ever able to do with wet dyes. You do not need to be an artist to perform perfectly great retouching on a computer. If you're smart enough to learn how to operate a camera and take pictures, you can learn how to use a computer for digital imaging.

Here's how I handle a typical job.

The secret to all retouching is to do the work on a large "work print." In the old days, major retouching was always done on a large, 16x20 or, in some cases, a 20x24, work print. Today, with computers, we do the same thing. Using the Navigator control in Photoshop V5.0 (PS-5), you first enlarge the image. I usually take the image up to just before you can start to see individual pixels on the screen. If you were working on an 8x10 size print, such magnification becomes the equivalent of a work print measuring 40 or 50" wide. At that magnification it becomes a lot easier to make the tiny, incremental changes that are used when performing the work. In Figure 1 you can see the man's left eye showing the glare that was produced by the twin umbrellas used to make the original exposure.

Next, I used the PS-5 Clone Tool (sometimes called the Rubber Stamp Tool). I select a brush size with a diameter that is a little less than the radius of the glare. Then, using standard Clone Tool techniques, I begin to nibble away at the edges of the glare. Notice in Figure 2 I have removed part of the glare that occurs on both sides of the eyeball. I have also removed one of the two catchlights, leaving the one catchlight that occurs at about the 3 o'clock position on the eyeball. In Figure 4 I have completed the task of removing all of the glare on both sides of the eyeball. And, in Figure 3 you'll notice that I have added in a lighter tone value where the white of the eye should be.

The white of the eye is pretty much obscured in the original image by the glare. In order to restore the white of the eyeball, I simply selected a very tiny brush and picked up some of the very light tone value that occurs in the area of the frame of the eyeglasses. I cloned this lighter tone value into the area where the white of the eye should normally be. Then, by reducing the opacity of the Clone Tool and frequently changing the selection sites used by the Clone Tool, I was able to blend the lighter tone value with the surrounding skin tones. Finally, I used a very tiny brush size, picked up some of the darker tones occurring in the pupil of the eye and used those darker tones to draw a bit of an outline where the upper and lower eyelid edges should be.

Again, I used a reduced opacity setting for the Clone Tool so that I could smoothly blend the outline that I was drawing with the surrounding skin tones. I also had to frequently change the selection site for the Clone Tool as I worked. The finished results of all of that work are shown in Figure 3. By then using the Navigation Tool and reducing the magnification back to normal, you can see the completed left eye in Figure 4.

I had worked on the man's left eye first because it required the least amount of drawing in order to complete the restoration. Most of the left eye work was simple Clone Tool work. Only a little drawing had to be done to draw in the areas where the white of the eyeball occurs. But, the man's right eye would require a lot more drawing since more of the actual eyeball has been obscured by the flash glare.