Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I'm sorry if this has already been addressed somewhere, but didn't find it.

I have some pictures of my dogs taken with a flash. One dog has red eyes which I have corrected. But the other has yellow-green eyes which the RE adjuster doesn't seem to work on.

Does anyone have some pointers regarding fixing green eyes?

Thanks.

Frank

Hi Frank,
Never worry about re-asking a question.

Have you tried the red eye removal tool in Qimage?
Hard to tell when you say, The RE tool didn't work.

Fred

Interesting question.  I've taken more green-eyed dog photos than red-eyed ones.  You would think there would be a similar one-click solution to the red-eye reduction one.

The problem is almost always due to on-camera built-in flash, where the flash is almost in line with the lens and eye.  The old potato-mashers never had this problem even when attached to the camera, they were just off-center enough to avoid the problem.  The tiny flash that came with the PEN-F usually caused this problem, although occasionally it might be red-eye, still don't know why.

It will be interesting to see the answers you get to this.

The simplest solution, since they are your dogs, would be to re-shoot with the flash at least partly off-camera, if that's possible with your gear.

Not having any problem here: see attached.  OK, that's a cat and not a dog but the RE tool does get rid of it.  The RE tool is a little sensitive to exposure so if the eyes are really blown out and glowing, it might not work.  But for typical "green eye" it seems to work OK for me.  Just be sure to start your click/drag in the green part of the pupil.

Regards,
Mike

Interestingly there are 2 dogs in the picture and one had red eyes and the other had green. I guess it's a function of the angle on the eye and the flash.

The red eyes cleaned-up nicely as expected with the RE tool.

With the green eyes, the RE tool works as expected but the eyes go from shinny green to a lighter yellow. As if the tool doesn't know what to do with non-red eyes. Repeated applications of the RE tool just leave the eyes as yellow.

I'm open to anything I can do in Qimage to make her eyes darker.

Frank

As long as you have Mask/RE selected, each time you swipe in the same spot, it'll make it darker.  So if you swipe several times over the same pupil, it'll eventually get so dark it'll be black.

The only problem you might have is: I've seen some eye shine that is so bright the bright green "blooms" way over the pupil into the iris and even into parts of the face.  That'll take more creativity to correct.

Why don't you just post the picture here and I'll show you?  You could post just a crop of the face of the one with the green eyes to keep the file size small if needed.

Mike

Here's a crop from the picture.

Frank

Dragging Mask/RE over both eyes several times each made them darker.  Then I touched up the left eye (on our right) with two very small vanishes to get rid of some of the X shaped specular highlights.  I ended up with the attached.

Mike

Mike,

Could you please give a step by step list of what you did. I tried the repeated applications but certainly don't get the same results. Do you need to exit out of the Mask/RE dialog with each application? Or just click in the eye center and sweep to left or right over and over again? For me I just see the green eye go to a paler green with the first application and then stay like that.

Thanks.

Frank

I'll do better than that: here's a 5 minute video.  I just posted the raw video with no editing so the volume is a bit low.  Just turn it up.  ;)

https://youtu.be/JTYf1-5lC74

Mike

Thanks Mike,

You make it look very easy. I can see that my technique still needs a lot of help to use Qimage to full potential.

Frank

I must be doing something wrong.
I went to my eye doctor for "Pink Eye", and told him I was using Qimage to treat it. Was not improving.
He told me to call Dr. Mike, specialist.

Fred

Well, Nikon's latest firmware update has doggie facial recognition.  Surely QU wont be far behound.