May 26 2006
A Better Red-Eye Fix for Photoshop
Frustrated with the red-eye removal tool? I don’t like it. It never works right for me. This is the “old fashioned” way to do it.
Select a small soft brush, about the size of the red-eye you need to remove.
If you are going to work on a whole bunch at once, you can quickly change your brush size with your keyboard shortcuts, [ ]. Bigger [, smaller ]. Keyboard shortcuts are the key to working quickly. They can cut tons of time off your work. I am speedy and I know much of that comes from knowing and using my keyboard instead of my menus.
You are usually zoomed in when doing red-eye work. Use your keyboard shortcuts to zoom in and out,
command space bar to zoom in for Mac
control space bar to zoom in for PC ?
option space bar to zoom out for Mac
?? for PC, help me out here,
To quickly move around you can hold down the space bar, which turns your cursor to a hand, allowing you to drag your image to the next set of eyes,
Change the brush mode to color. If you can see the color of the person’s eye, select it with the eye dropper (hold down option to bring up the eye dropper). Just tap your brush or make a small swirl to get rid of the red eye. If you do too much, use your keyboard shortcut for undo, command Z and try again.
Sometimes this won’t be enough. If the pupil is too light, use your burn tool 
set to darken shadows and darken it up a bit. If it’s a large, clear photo, adding a single highlight or enhancing the highlight in the pupil will make a huge difference.
Another must for time is using a tablet and pen. The mouse is clumsy, especially for brush work like this. A $99 wacom works great, that’s what I use. I used to have the big fancy tablets, but they aren’t any better in my opinion.