Fallen Son

Im pretty new with photoshop and I want to change the color of the iris of an eye while retaining all the dark/black markings. How would i do this? Its driving me nuts!

(BTW i must say that this is one of the most helpful forums i have ever seen!)

Blinky2004

Hi Fallen Son, welcome to the community. We hope you enjoy your stay.

As to your question, it's actually quite a simple solution.
First choose a new colour.

Add a new layer above your photo. Grab a soft brush and hold it over one of the eyes. Tap the [ key to reduce the brush size or the ] key to increase it, until the brush is the same size as the iris. Then click then brush once over each iris.

Now change the Blend Mode to Color/Overlay/Softlight/Hardlight... which ever suite your taste. Reduce Opacity if need be.

TIP: you can now opne the HUE&SAT filter and change the HUE of the colour in realtime, until you get the one you like best. [righton]

HINT: there are a few other methods around, but they usually involve destructive editing -- which i hate. This method allows the original photo to remain untouched.

Fallen Son

thank you so much! I will post the picture when i get it finished!

ladyfinger007

Welcoem to PSG, Fallen Son!

On the same wavelenght, this excellent tutorial http://www.shanzcan.com/photoshop/BlondeS.pdf explains how to change hair colour form brown to blonde... it could also be used for eyes, even if Mark's answer is the easiest...

Blinky2004

Hey it never hurts to know more than one way to do something in PS Pierre.

Thanks for reposting that link. I had forgotten about that tute. [righton]

Josh

- Draw a circular selection around pupil (doesn't matter if it includes skin or some other parts of the eye)
- Add a hue-saturation (H&S) adjustment layer (this will convert the selection to a mask)
- In H&S, under "edit", select the color that comes close to the current color of the pupil
- pick the color of the pupil with the color picker that you find in H&S
- use color picker +(plus) to add more variations of this color
- adjust hue

Make adjustments to the layer mask if needed.


This technique is especially interesting if you have large areas for which you want to change the color.

Blinky2004

Hey another great "non destructive" method.
Thx Josh. [righton]