Highlight in the eye

I took this picture about 25 years ago and so it was shot on 35mm transparency film.  To be honest I am surprised it survived and didn’t end up in the rubbish bin, because the bird has no highlight in its eye.  

The eye looks dead – empty – blank – a black hole in its head!

I always used to say (and this is still as relevant) “if the birds eye is right, then the rest of the bird is right”! 

In those days we could do nothing about it, except watch the bird and press the button on the camera at the right time. 

Obviously digital changes the situation.

Just roll your cursor over the bird and watch the birds eye.

It is very easy to dramatically improve a disappointing image simply by putting a highlight in the subjects’ eye. 

Some people may consider this to be ‘cheating’ but in Photoshop we use expressions like ‘burn’, ‘dodge’ and ‘crop’.   Where did these terms originate?    Answer – in the darkroom of expert monochrome printers!   They would ‘burn’ an area to make it darker and ‘dodge’ an area to create a highlight. 

Looking through Flickr I see many pictures that could do with a little bit of ‘tender loving care’ to bring the best out of them. 

So how about trying the same in Photoshop if you happen to have a picture of an animal with a ‘dead’ eye?

• Start by making a copy of the image – by working on a copy there is no danger of ruining an image, because the original is safely in another folder. 
• Zoom into the eye to 100% – if you go too close you can’t see the overall effect.
• Select the ‘dodge’ tool and I usually set the ‘exposure’ to around 30% – if you use a higher exposure it’s harder to keep control.
• Set the ‘brush size’ to about a quarter of the size of the eye – so quite small.
• As you carefully sweep the dodge tool over the eye, try to imagine the natural effect of the sun or light sky – therefore it is going to be the top of the eye because light comes from above. 
• You may need to use the dodge tool several times to get the best effect depending on the subject. 
• Be careful if you can see both of the creatures’ eyes that the highlights compliment each other – not boss-eyed!

That is only one way of creating a highlight and you may easily discover another way that suits you better – I have several different methods that I use depending on the subject and effect I want to create.

Monochrome workers always took a pride in their darkroom techniques, why shouldn’t we take equal pride in getting the best out of our images?