Changing Eye color?

[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!)

 

[theKeeper]

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.

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!

 

[sPECtre]

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...

 

[theKeeper]

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.

 

[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.

 

[theKeeper]

Hey another great "non destructive" method.
Thx Josh.