Recently a colleague of mine, Kathy Eyster, wrote an article in her award-winning blog, Essential Digital Camera, on how to fix flash-filled pet eyes using Photoshop.  The red-eye tool won’t fix them, as it simply takes red out, and pet pupils don’t turn red.  Kathy points out that there are two steps, first turning the pupil almost black, and then painting back in a catch light.  Reading this led me to attempt the same in Lightroom with the adjustment brush.  Kathy was kind enough to lend me her photo.

My conclusion is that both techniques work equally well, and are equally as straightforward (assuming you know each program).

Here’s the Lightroom approach:  (If you don’t know how to use the adjustment brush, watch my Lightroom 3 adjustment brush video here. It works the same in Lightroom 4.)

[UPDATE 2015: A Pet Eye feature was added to the Red Eye tool in Lightroom CC and 6. Try that, but you may find that it doesn’t work well. In that case, use the adjustment-brush technique below.]

1.  In the adjustment brush, as a starting point set exposure to -4.00 and saturation to -65. In Lightroom 3, also set brightness to -50. In Lightroom 4, also set highlights to -100.   Zoom in and paint both pupils with a fairly soft-edged brush.  Do not use auto mask — the edges will be too harsh.  After painting, go back to the sliders and adjust exposure / brightness / highlights / shadows to get the right amount of darkening (it depends on how dark the pupils were to start with).  Adjust saturation so that most of the color is taken out. If the pupils are still not dark enough, click on “New” at the top of the adjustment brush panel to start a new adjustment, and apply more darkening.

2.  To paint in the catch lights, click on “New” at the top of the adjustment brush panel, set Exposure to +4.00 (and in Lightroom 4, Highlights to +100).  Paint catch lights in both eyes. Adjust the slider values as needed. (If they are not bright enough in Lightroom 3, also increase the brightness slider.)

The round adjustment pins may get in the way of painting.  If so, type H to temporarily hide them, then H to get them back again (or in the toolbar below the picture, change Show Edit Pins temporarily to Never).

Before

After

This is also a hint to you that anytime you want to turn something in your photo black (like a background), extreme negative exposure and brightness or highlights and shadows will do it.  Occasionally you will need a second extreme adjustment on top of the first to get enough darkening, but it can be done.  Of course the opposite can be achieved as well — turn something white by painting with extreme positive exposure and brightness.

Do check out Kathy’s blog!  She has lots of excellent articles.