What is the Red Eye Effect? The red eye effect is an undesired photographic flaw caused by the reflection of light inside the eyes of the subject. It happens when the flash of the camera is shone directly in front of the eyes of the subject.
The red eye effect produces a scary picture of the person having glowing red eyes. This is caused by the reflection of the light at the back of the eyes bouncing back to the lens of the camera.
This effect also occurs not only in pictures of people, but also other animals, like your pet cat or dog, though it is much easier to prevent this in humans.
Getting Rid of the Red Eye Effect You don’t have to worry if you happen to get a picture that has red eye effect since you can easily get rid of it in without much hassle.
If you use a digital camera, all you have to do is download the photo to your computer and use image editing software to get rid of it. If you still use a film camera, or you have an old printed photo that has the red eye effect, simply use an image scanner to create a digital copy of it on your computer. When scanning a photograph, make sure that you set it to the highest resolution possible so that you don’t get a small image that won’t do much if you had it reprinted and enlarged.
Image Editing: Removing the Red Eye Effect It is very easy to remove red eye in photographs using even the most basic photo editing software. Most digital cameras come with a very useful image editing program that has this feature. However, if yours didn’t come with one, you can easily download software from the Internet.
You don’t need commercial software either, since there are many free programs that can do that task very well. GiMP and Irfanview are good examples of such.
How to Remove Red Eye Effect Removing the red eye effect using image editing software varies, however, there are general rules that you must follow to achieve best results.
•Before starting, never forget to make a backup copy of the original image. This is to make sure that if anything goes wrong with the picture you are working with, you can simply revert to the original picture. It is very simple to do that: you either make a duplicate copy, or you can use the “Save As” feature.
•Make sure that you zoom into the red eye effect before you use the red eye removal function. This ensures that you accurately remove the unwanted effect instead of other details in the eye or face.
•In most cases, you will have to select the area that has the red eye effect. Make sure you only select or highlight the area where the red eye is present. You may want to tweak with some settings but often the default settings already does a good job.
•If you accidentally commit a mistake, use the undo function first before you open your backup file. It saves you time, too.
•Try to fix other problems while you are at it. Remove the blemishes on the face, crop out unwanted parts of the photo, and adjust the color, contrast, and brightness as well.
Avoiding Red Eye in your Photographs If you really don’t want to spend extra time editing and removing red eye from the pictures that you got, the best thing is to avoid it. Here are some tips:
•Avoid using the flash when taking pictures of people. Use ambient lighting. If you really need to use the flash, bounce it off the ceiling or wall.
•If your camera has a red eye reduction feature, use it. This feature works by firing the flash several times before taking the picture. It causes the iris of the eye to reduce its size, reducing the possibility of reflecting the flash back to the camera.
•Also, avoid taking shots in a right angle to the eyes of the subject so that the light bounced back by the eyes will not be captured by the camera.
•If your camera supports flash filters, use them so that it will diffuse the light coming from the flash of your camera. If you don’t have a white filter for your flash, you can improvise by using a piece of cloth like your handkerchief or tissue paper.
•Be aware of your surroundings when taking a picture, too. Determine a location where there will be enough ambient or natural lighting so that there will be no need to use the flash.