Exorcising Demon Deer Eyes

As I stated in my last post, I got lucky the other day and came across these deer. Unfortunately it was right at dusk, and I really don't know how to shoot in poor light. These deer were hanging out on the side of the road by a rest area, I pulled up and left my headlights on them and they just hung out. I grabbed my camera, stepped out of the car, and the little ladies let me walk right up to them. I was roughly about 10 feet away. Between using my flash, and the car headlights shining on them, I got some terrible pictures of some demon deer. I don't think they were demon, but red eye removal just wasn't going to fix these demon eyes.

Everything you need to use should be circled.

I did some experimenting in Gimp 2.8 and figured out a decent way to remove the light from their eyes. This is really simple and if you use Photoshop you should be able to accomplish this same effect.

Look at that beauty, if I only got there 10 minutes earlier. The redeye removal filter wasn't going to fix this.

Here's how this works. Load the deer image in Gimp, or whatever photo editing program your using. Go to the layers box on the right and click add new layer. Towards the top of the program screen where it says file, edit, view, click on view, and then zoom to about 400%. Now click on the Ellipse tool, and make an ellipse around one of the bright dots in the deers eyes. Then hit the shift key and do the same to the other eye.

Now click on the color picker tool, and click it right on the outside of the circle you selected of one of the eyes. Click on the brush tool and fill the circle with the color you selected. Now repeat this process with the other eye.

Now go to the top of the program screen and click select none. Now click on the smudge tool, and make your brush size about 2 or 3 pixels. Now smudge the layer with just the eyes and little bit where there's a pixel or 2 you missed.Go over to the layers bar and adjust the opacity a bit until the color blends with the eyes. That's it your done. If you did everything correct you should have an image that looks like this.

Crude but effective. With a little practice I think I could master this technique.

This is a crude but effective fix. With a little practice I think you can see the potential this effect has. Hopefully I'll have some better pix to post soon. At least these photo's made for a decent tutorial.If your bored play around with the contrast and brightness a bit and see if you can adjust the light a bit better.

Thanks for reading and I hope this Gimp tutorial was helpful. Feel free to leave any comments positive or negative. Thanks for following and check back soon for updates.