The Eyes and the Black Mask ...

[R_Fredrick_Smith]

Here is the second tutorial on eye work, or making the eyes sharper. This method is a bit more complicated than my first tutorial, but has the advantage of giving you a lot more control.

Step 1: Bring the photo into Photoshop and do post processing like cropping, etc. Now at this point we create a duplicate layer. Here is what things look like at this point:



Step 2: Apply the unsharp mask to the layer remembering to sharpen for the eyes, even though this will oversharpen the skin. Look at the results below:



Notice the skin is way to sharp.

Step 3: Click on the Add Layer Mask Icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette but hold down the ALT key while clicking. Here is what it looks like right before you click:



Step 4: Here is what you'll see right after the above click:



When you hold down the ALT key you are telling Photoshop to add a Layer mask but filled completely with Black. For a mask, black hides everything under it. Notice how the skin is now softer again, but the eyes lack the extra sharpness we had earlier. Now if only we could remove the part of the black over the eyes and brows, we could reveal the sharpness.

Step 5: What we do is choose a small soft brush and select the color white. Because if we paint over the black with white, then where ever we paint the sharpness that the black covers will be revealed. Here we are half done:



Notice the sharper eye on the left compared to the right. But the skin doesn't have that extra sharpness. If you look closely on the right you can see where the white paint has been applied to the black layer mask. Just remember that white reveals and black conceals.

But what if we make a mistake. Well just change to black and paint over the mistake and away it goes.

Well hope you enjoyed this tutorial. I think if you now play with different aspects of the layer mask (such as blending modes, you'll really see some extra possibilities here.

cheers,
rfs