Fixing Pet Photos

December 15, 2003 8:56 AM

How can I fix dog "red eye." Well, its worse than red eye, the dog's eyes are completely gone and are replace with two glowing orange spheres. I've read some howtos on the subject of rendering eyes using simple photoshop tools, but that really isnt going to work. Anyone here experienced in digital photo manipulation want to fix this photo for me for a modest fee? Or know where I can get this service done cheaply?
posted by skallas to computers & internet (13 comments total)

exorcise the dog, then re-take the photo.

you're welcome.
posted by TreeHugger at 8:58 AM on December 15, 2003

The dog was euthanized recently, so I can't re-pic her.

goes off to the corner and cries for a while
posted by skallas at 9:00 AM on December 15, 2003

I'll do it for free. Send it to the e-mail in my profile.
posted by vraxoin at 9:09 AM on December 15, 2003

if you have plenty of photos of your dog then maybe you can find one that closely matches the lighting, angle, etc of the pic you want to fix. copy and paste the eyes and then follow the tutorials to fine-tune them.
posted by poopy at 9:13 AM on December 15, 2003

vraxoin, would you mind outlining your technique or linking to a tutorial, if you know of one? I'd really appreciate knowing how to deal with my demon-eyed cat.
posted by stonerose at 9:30 AM on December 15, 2003

I know for my needs it's enough to throw them into Photoshop, magnify then select the eye area (magnetic lasso is great for this), then Image>Adjustments>Desaturate or >Replace colour. It's not fancy, but it does a decent job.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 9:41 AM on December 15, 2003

The technique I use is pretty simple. In Photoshop, go to the Channels palette and find the channel where the pupils are not lit--in people the is usually the green channel. Using the elliptical selection tool, with the green channel highlighted, select JUST the pupils of each eye, then feather the selection by one pixel to smooth it out. Then copy the selection and use the Paste Into command to paste it into both the red and blue channels.

This usually works like a charm, unless the glare from the eyes has blurred out of the pupils and is marring other parts of the eye or face. In that case, I can't help you.
posted by vraxoin at 9:43 AM on December 15, 2003

Use natural or ambient incandescent light, and leave the flash off.
posted by textist at 10:02 AM on December 15, 2003

Gah, shit. Sorry, I missed the line about the euthanasia, skallas.

Prepend "Ideally, you'd..." to the above.
posted by textist at 10:05 AM on December 15, 2003

vraxion: unless the glare from the eyes has blurred out of the pupils and is marring other parts of the eye or face. In that case, I can't help you.

Yeah, the eyes are totally gone. What I'm thinking of doing is just scourging the net for dogs of the same breed and applying their eyes. I'm going to give that a try and see how well it comes out. I really dont have too may photos of her, and all the others suffer from "dog eye" anyway.
posted by skallas at 10:15 AM on December 15, 2003

To avoid "dog eye," use an external flash. You only get the problem when the flash is too close to the lens of the camera. Elevate the flash from the camera by even a few inches and the problem basically goes away.
posted by kindall at 10:58 AM on December 15, 2003

E-mail me the photo (aaron + twenty two in numerals at optonline dot net) (yeah, paranoid about address harvesting) and I'll see what I can do.
posted by Aaorn at 12:48 PM on December 15, 2003

Don't worry about e-mail harvesting. Our fearless leader has already dealt with the problem. If you put your e-mail address in your profile, it only displays for logged-in MeFi members.
posted by fuzz at 1:44 PM on December 15, 2003