A small light in your subject’s eyes reflective of the sun or other light source can really add life to your portraits. If these catch lights aren’t there naturally, you can add them using Lightroom. The technique I show in this video tutorial uses the adjustment brush, with positive Exposure, and sometimes positive Shadows and negative Saturation.
(For best quality, hit Play, and then click on the sprocket wheel (
)in the bottom right of the video and choose 720/HD.)
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Related post: Video Tutorial Lesson on the Adjustment Brush (recorded with Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 or CS6, but applicable to later versions of both.)
Laura
This is as usual a very helpful tip. Information in small bites is easy to comprehend. As I haven’t added catch- lights before, I just wanted to ask about where to position them, presumably this is simply by rtial and error? If it doesn’t look right , just move them?
Kind regards and seasons greetings to you.
Martin
Ps I will not forget to change my copyright metadata to 2014, unlike last year.
Hi Martin,
It really depends on where your light source is (or what you are simulating). I’m not a portrait expert, so I don’t have any rules for you, but I would suggest start paying attention to where you see catch lights in real life and in other photos.
Happy New Year to you!
Very informative and detailed. Thank you Laura.
Happy holidays to you and your close ones and to all the members, of course ;-)
Janick (Paris, France)
thanks I was looking for a solution other than heading to PS. appreciate your blog.
Very nice tip and really easy. I have a few photos to try this on and looking forward to the results.
Thanks!
[…] catchlights in post processing solves this problem. It’s easy to do in Lightroom. This link leads to a very good YouTube video by Lightroom expert Laura Shoe for adding catch lights to eyes […]
Thanks very much. Quick and easy to understand tutorial. I also did not know the trick about holding down space bar to move to other side (very helpful). It’s always great to learn new tricks in LR.
You’re welcome, Mal!