How to Change the Color of the Eyes in Photoshop

Original Image from Pixabay

When retouching an image as a photographer or graphic designer, you might want to change the color of the eye to bring out the beauty of an image. In this tutorial we will get through the easy process of doing this.
Get a good looking photo that you will edit. In this tutorial, i will use Photoshop CC 2018
You can still use any version of Photoshop and follow up. The technique still remain the same


Zoom in the photo closely to get a clearer view of the
eye (Letter Z is for zoom tool)

As you zoom, you can also use hand tool or H to get closer view of the eyes

Since our focus is to change the color of the eyes without affecting any other part in the face,
select the eye using the lasso tool or letter L on the keyboard

With the lasso tool, create a selection around the iris. Avoid the white part of the eyes since we
do not need it for our work. Your selection might not be perfect at this stage. We will refine it later

After selecting one eye, go to the other eye and hold shift key on the keyboard. This shows a + sign on the lasso tool. it tells the lasso tool to add selection of the second eye to the first

Since we have both eyes selected, go to the New Fill or Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the layer panel. Chose Hue/Saturation from the menu

In the options for hue/saturation that appears in the Photoshop property panel, select colorize by checking its box. Once you do this, the eyes turns to red. Surprised! Do not worry, you can change later

To change the color of the eye, we drag the Hue slider. The hue greatly determines the color. The Hue slider contains all the colors of the rainbow. It moves from Red on the left, through oranges, yellows, blues and so on to the red on the far end. It is left for you to chose your own hue. I set my hue at 206

Once you are through with the Hue, go to Saturation slider and slide to left to decrease the intensity. This makes the eyes look more natural

Now is time to change the blending mode. You will find the blend mode at the upper left area of the layer panel. It is always set as Normal at default. Change it to Color. It makes the eyes look brighter

Go to the layer mask. It has already been created since we added the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Photoshop used our selection of the eyes using lasso tool to create a mask for us. The layer mask is one of the most important feature in Photoshop
The layer mask thumbnail is in the layer panel. it is filled with black color except two white areas where our eyes selection was done

Select the Brush tool (Letter B). We will use the brush to clean up any area that the blue color extended into the white of the eye

Check the Foreground color because that is the color the brush will paint with. Press the letter D to reset the Background and Foreground Colors to default.
Use Letter X to swap between foreground and background color

With a soft brush selected, use the brush to paint over the areas where there is problem. Make sure your Foreground color is black
To increase or decrease the brush size, use left Bracket Key [ or right Bracket Key ] respectively
Holding Shift while holding either of the left or right bracket key makes the brush edges softer or harder respectively

After painting, check for errors and toggle the visibility of the layer mask to see the effect of what you created