Photography with Kristen Duke~Photoshopping Racoon Eyes

Have I mentioned how much I love the beauty of the sunlight?  All times of day!  Even when it is full sun in an open field, I find a way to love it.  I recently did a little model shoot with 2 teen girls and it fell in the middle of the day.  Some shots that I thought I’d despise, I ended up loving because of the unique light I found that I try to avoid.  Those pics here.

But that is for later!  Back to the topic of the sun.  I often hear the comment that people think I would WISH for an overcast day when out shooting portraits, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.  Besides the beautiful evening glow and the catchlights in the eyes, on overcast days, I get the dreaded racoon eyes.  It tells me that I’ll have a lot of post processing (photo-shopping) to do when I get  home to compensate for that.
I had a hard time selecting a sample image, worried someone would see their dark under eyes as a sample.  This is my sis in law.  It was an overcast day, so these images are worse because of that.

Some people are blessed with more smoothness in the area, and others…well…even the sun doesn’t help that area fully….even some kids have deeper pockets that could use just a little nudge.  Images look better, and if you do it correctly (subtly) people don’t realize WHY they look better, they just do.  This is where the clone brush comes in.

So now what you do after having your opacity at 12% is go “grab” the color of the skin right next to the dark patch.  Hit alt and “click” your mouse to select that spot and start swiping on the outside of the eye and stroke towards the corner of the eye.