Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Fixing Red Eye

Everyone who’s ever taken a flash photo has run into the dreaded problem of red eye—those glowing, demonic pupils that make your subject look like someone out of an Anne Rice novel. Red eye is even more of a problem with digital cameras than with film, but luckily, Elements has a simple and terrific Red Eye tool for fixing it. All you need to do is click the red spots with the Red Eye tool, and your problems are solved.

Tip

You can try to fix red eye automatically right in the Organizer (see the box above). You’ll probably find that the Quick Fix Red Eye tool is much more reliable, though.

To use the Quick Fix Red Eye tool:

1. Find the photo you want to fix, and then open it in the Quick Fix window, or in the Editor.

   The Red Eye tool works the same whether you get to it from the Quick Fix Toolbox or the main Toolbox in the Standard Editor.

2. Use the Zoom tool to magnify the eyes.

   You can also switch to the Hand tool if you need to drag the photo so that the eyes are front and center.

3. In the Toolbox, click the Red Eye icon (or press Y).

   If you need to adjust how the Red Eye tool works, the Options bar gives you two controls, although 99 percent of the time you can ignore them:

   Darken Amount. If the result is too light, then increase the percentage in this box.

   Pupil Size. Increase or decrease the Pupil Size number to tell Elements how much area to consider part of a pupil.

4. Using the Red Eye tool in Figure 11-4, click in the red part of the pupil.

   That’s it. Just one click should ...