Glowing animal eyes.

[Jaedon]

My dog Buddy treed a pair of raccoons the other night and I went out to bring him back in so I grabbed the camera and took a few shots.

Now shooting any animal at night with their reflective eyes is extremely difficult when you have to use a flash.

Does anyone know an easier technique to remove the "yellow" eyes other than doing what I did?

I took an image I had taken in daylight and then cut out the face and sized it to macth then erased everything but the eyes layered over the night time shot. I then cloned out the reflective light off the face to bring it back to a more natural look. I have read that there is a way to use the color mixer tool to remove this cast from the eyes but I have yet to figure out how to do it.

Here's my before and after shots. How's my post work and if anyone knows a faster easier technique I would greatly appreciate the tips.

OH yeah.. and Manual focus all around... (Thanks loupey for making me practice this in the daylight) do all cameras have such a hard time focusing under low light conditions like this?

[Copy_Kot]

Wow! That is some great post processing work!!! Have you tried just cloning the eye's from one image to another?

[Jaedon]

I tried cloing the eyes at first but I just couldn't seem to get the shape right. The cutting and pasting technique worked teh best.. but of course took the longest. From before to after this image took me about a half hour. But I use PS daily so for others not quite as adept it would take a lot longer. I am going to do more research and if/when I find out more I will post it here for everyone to have some other options for techniques.

I went back over this image after I posted it and fixed the slight colour variation between the eyes and the nose just to make it perfect.

[Loupey]

Wow! Big difference between the before and after.

Looks great as-is. Natural looking.

I couldn't have done it. So I have no helpful tips here

[Jaedon]

Thaks Loupey.. good to hear that it is natural looking. When looking at my own work, because I know where teh changes have been made, I have a hard time telling if I am leaving it looking natural sometimes.

I found a tutorial on how to use PS to fix Pet Eye but it wouldn't work with eyes as blown out as I was dealing with.

Here's the link for those who may need the information.
http://video.about.com/graphicssoft/peteye-mov.htm

Found one more that looks like it has potential. I am going to experiment with this technique and see how it works.
link: http://www.easyelements.com/fix-red-eye.html