Changing eye colour to Blue in Photoshop

This tutorial is not about how to become Frank Sinatra, its intended to help you with retouching your photographs.

In the digital era, correcting photographs has become very easy but still we cannot leave everything to our camera or computer. It is always better to do some work manually because the results can be much better.

The topic of this tutorial is how to create Blue eyes. Of course, you can use similar methods to create Green and Brown eyes but Id very careful with changing the eyes to Pink.

Ok lets start. I found this photograph at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1113322.

Its quite good; but we could try to enhance this picture a little bit.

Stock image from Stock Xchng

Technique 1 - The most basic technique to turn the eyes to Blue

1. Open the image in Photoshop
2. Go to Layers palette and create the new empty layer by clicking the New Layer icon in the bottom right corner of the palette.

Creating a new empty layer in Photoshop

3. Now change the New Layer blending mode from Normal to Soft Light

Changing the blending mode in Photoshop

4. Pick some nice Blue shade for your foreground, something not too vivid and not too dull, I picked #3399CC

Colour picker in Photoshop

5. Select the Brush Tool and adjust the size of the brush using Left Bracket key [ to decrease or Right Bracket key ] to increase the size. If you hold down the SHIFT key you make the brush edges softer (SHIFT+[ ) or harder (SHIFT+])
6. Now make sure you have New Layer selected. Start painting over the eyes. Youll notice that colour is changing very subtley, and all the details are preserved.

Eye colour changing

7. The final effect should look like this.

Eye colour retouched

If you want to adjust the effect , its very easy. If you think that effect is to strong, you can decrease the opacity of the New Layer. If you think the effect is to subtle, simply duplicate New Layer by dragging it onto New Layer Icon , or go to Layer > Duplicate Layer.
You could also change the blending mode of the New Layer from Soft Light to Color

Duplicating the new layer

Technique 2

This method is very similar to the previous one, but this time were going to use Photoshops Colour Replacement Tool instead of the Brush.
1. Open the image in Photoshop
2. Duplicate the Background Layer by dragging it onto New Layer icon ( Layer > Duplicate Layer)
3. Select the Color Replacement Tool and set your foreground to nice shade of Blue, I picked #3399CC ... again.

Colour replacement tool

4. Paint over the Eyes ;)

Using colour replacement tool in Photoshop

5. And as the result you should see something similar to this

Eye colour retouched using colour replacement

It looks good.. but still, it could be much better. So, lets try the third way.

Technique 3

1. Open the Image in Photoshop
2. Now we have to extract the eyes and copy them onto a separate layer. There are many ways to do it, were going to use the Quick Mask Mode. Below the Foreground / Background colour indicator there is small icon, click it !

Quick mask icon in Photoshop

Now a weird thing happens. The colour indicators automatically swap to black and white, and if you try to paint, youll see its painting red! Dont panic. Thats how we create a Quick Mask - we basically paint it. So paint over the eyes on the image.

Drawing a quick mask

Quick mask drawn

3. Once youve finished painting, click again on Quick Mask icon - youll see that the Quick Mask has converted itself to a selection.

Quick mask selection in photoshop

The problem is that selection has to be inversed so just go to Select > Inverse ( CTRL+SHIFT+I)

Inverse selection

4. Now we create new layer from the selection go to Layer > New > Layer via Copy or hit CTRL+J
5. Now you have a new layer with The Eyes only

Original layer and eyes layer

6. Go to Image > Adjustments > Curves (CTRL+M) and manipulate the curves to get something similar to this, then press OK

Adjusting curves in Photoshop

7. Go to Image > Adjustments > HUE/SATURATION (CTRL+U) and use settings below.
Make sure that you have ticked Colorize. Then press OK.

Editing hue saturation

8. Now your image should look something like this

Recoloured image

Its almost perfect, just one more thing
9. Select Dodge Tool, set its opacity to 20%. Then click on the background layer, and paint over the white areas in the eyes. Remember: dont go too far or else shell look like a Zombie, be subtle ;)
Thats it!

Completely retouched eye colour

Side by side comparisons

Now You can compare 4 images and see which technique suits you most:

Stock image from Stock Xchng

Method 1 soft light layer mode

Method 2 color replacement tool

Method 3 curves and hue saturation