Enhancing the eye?

[Corey Hayes]

Hey guys I am just wondering when I am editing photos I see a lot of people tweak the eye. Most birds seem to have a very black eye when photographed, is the idea to just show more detail of the iris? or should I leave them black?

for example in this picture the eye was almost black but I lightened it up to see more detail, is this the right thing to do?

[Daniel Cadieux]

It's as right or as wrong as cloning or other manipulations, depending on your personal post processing ethics. I do enhance the eye. Most birds, in certain light and certain angle can and will show the iris and I choose to have them visible in my images. In some species it is already very visible more than others (some sparrows, some plovers and some other shorebirds, some flycatchers) and all show it from close range (e.g. full-frame head portrait) The trick is not to overdo it in post as then it becomes very artificial looking. Another thing that sometimes works well is simply darkening the pupil as sometimes they are a bit hazy, that way it becomes darker than the iris without touching it.

In short, it is up to you, the artist.

[John Chardine]

Hi Corey- I think you did a nice, subtle job on the eye. As Dan says, it can be overdone.

My view is as follows: the eye in many species is naturally dark and is rendered almost black when the tonality of the rest of the image is light. The dynamic range just can't be handled by your camera system. I would lighten the eye a little in these cases and consider it a spot HDR technique. As such, IMO it is completely legitimate.

[arash_hazeghi]

I don't enhance the eye as it makes the bird look unnatural IMO. Some birds just have dark pupils and it's not a DR issue, you often don't see the pupil with your eyes either. I sometimes delete the 2nd catch light for images that are downsized for web but that's about it. For my taste, your image does look a bit unnatural but that's a personal choice as pointed out. Ultimately there are no rules and you have to like your photos :)

[John Chardine]

The visible eye is made up of an iris and inner pupil. The pupil is a hole in the centre of the iris. Pupils are always black except when you get reflection from the retina from a flash- this is known as steel-eye. Irises on the other hand vary in colour hugely from species to species and can be white, cream, orange, red, grey, brown etc. The idea of enhancing the eye is to bring up the iris a little in those species with a dark iris. So long as this is done subtly, as mentioned above, the HDR effect can be very pleasing.

[arash_hazeghi]

yes the iris, e.g. some people saturate the red iris in white-tailed kites to make it look more dramatic, it no longer resembles the real life bird. So it's a no go for me. All subjective... I hate most of those crazy HDR landscape photos too, they look unnatural and unrealistic to me but some people buy them and it seems to have become a cult these days. Art is subjective.

[John Chardine]

Agree all this is subjective. As mentioned several times above, the key to eye work is to be super-subtle. If the eye no longer looks like real-life, you have overdone it. By the same token, IMO, a great HDR image is one that does not look like HDR. However, I also enjoy "over-cooked" ones. Everything goes. This is all supposed to be fun.

[Corey Hayes]

Thanks guys.

[Roger Clark]

Our eyes have greater dynamic range than our cameras. If you watch birds with a good pair of binoculars, one can often see the detail including the iris and dark pupil that would appear dark without the binoculars. So when we photograph birds with telephotos and want to show the dynamic range that is there naturally and that we can see, one needs to dodge and burn to get the dynamic range into that which we can see on a monitor or print. This is no different than that done by landscape photographers. If you are dodging to raise those low areas, it is still on an image with less range than we see with our eyes, so in my view, perfectly fine. I would not agree with cloning in different eyes.

Roger