Section 6.7. Red-Eye

6.7. Red-Eye

Let's say you snap a near-perfect family portrait: The focus is sharp, the composition is balanced, everyone's smiling. And then you notice it: Uncle Mitch, standing dead center in the picture, looks like a vampire bat. His eyes are glowing red, as though illuminated by the evil within.

You've been victimized by red-eye , a common problem in flash photography. This creepy possessed-by- aliens look has ruined many an otherwise -great photo.

Red-eye is actually light reflected back from your subject's eyes. The bright light of your camera's flash passes through the pupil of each eye, illuminating the blood-red retinal tissue at the back of the eye. This illuminated tissue , in turn , is reflected back into the camera lens. Red-eye problems worsen when you shoot pictures in a dim room, because your subject's pupils are dilated wider, allowing even more light from the flash to illuminate the retina .

Section 3.10 offers advice on avoiding red-eye to begin with. But if it's too late for that, and people's eyes are already glowing demonically, there's always iPhoto's Red-Eye tool. It lets you alleviate red-eye problems by digitally removing the offending red pixels.

Start by opening your photo for editing. Change the zoom setting, if necessary, so that you have a close-up view of the eye with the red-eye problem (Figure 6-6).

Now click the Red-Eye button. Use the crosshair pointer to click inside each red- tinted eye; with each click, iPhoto neutralizes the red pixels, painting the pupils solid black. Of course, this means that everybody winds up looking like they have black eyes instead of red onesbut at least they look a little less like the walking undead.

Figure 6-6. Top: When you click the Red-Eye tool, a pop-up message informs you of the next step: Click carefully inside each affected eye. (If you don't see the Red-Eye tool, you may have to use the >> menu at the right end of the toolbar to find the Red-Eye command.)
Bottom: Truth be told, the Red-Eye tool doesn't know an eyeball from a pinkie toe. It just turns any red pixels black, regardless of what body part they're associated with. Friends and family members look more attractiveand less like Star Trek charactersafter you touch up their phosphorescent red eyes with iPhoto.