This is a little tutorial on modifying the eyes on images. I always saw icons where the eyes were in colour and the rest of the image in black and white so I tried out a few things with the eyes and this is my method of changing them - I don't know if other people have other ways of doing this, but this works for me, so lets see if it helps you or not. :)


I'm going to be taking a simple image of Sarah Michelle Gellar and showing you how to make the eyes sparkle and shine, how to change colours, and further down there's examples of images. This tutorial will run you through changing the first image into the second.

First of all create a new Layer and using the paintbrush create colour over the area you wish to change. The image below shows how mine looked.





Next change the blending mode to one that works for your image - for this example I used 'Color'. You can see how this turned out below.

To add in a little sparkle to the eyes, use the 'burn' and 'dodge' brushes over the original image to highlight and darken certain areas of the eyes to really make them sparkle.

To really make the eyes shine and stand out, we can sharpen the original layer. Simply select the area that you wish to edit.





Once you have selected the area go to Filter >>> Sharpen >>> Unsharp Mask...





I used the settings above, however by looking at your preview you can judge for yourself how you wish the eyes to look in your image. Below is the finished outcome.

If you now wish to change the colour of the eyes, select the layer with the eye colouring on it and decrease the 'Fill Opacity' to 0% and then adding a colour overlay by going to Layer >>> Layer Style >>> Colour Overlay; you can change the blending options and select various colours to use over the eyes, until you find one that works.

As I said in the introduction to this tutorial I wished to modify the eye colour over a black and white image, so I have inluded an example below for you to refer to. To make this example I changed the eye colour to green using the above method; and then desaturated the original layer, changed the brightness and contrast, used the 'burn' and 'dodge' tools to edit the image and blurred it a little.





You can also use this technique on other areas of an image besides the eyes. Following the exact same steps I then added in a colour over the lips on this image to give it a little extra colour in the image.