A Glint in Her Eye

 In this tutorial I am going to show you how to make a really nice emotional piece of parent and child. Now this really comes off better if you know both the parent and child in the images. As I didn’t have any on hand I once again went to http://www.sxc.hu/ for some stock images.

 These same techniques can be used to place a refection of anything onto a persons eye and you can achieve a myriad of possibilities. I highly recommend using this technique to add detail when doing a larger composition. So lets’ get started….

1. First lets open up both of the images you are going to use in photo shop. Both of the images I am using here are really high resolution images and that makes the whole process a lot easier. Using the move tool drag the image you want to be reflected, over the image of the eye.

 



 
2. Now using the Free Transform Tool (Edit>Free Transform) resize the image to fit over the pupil. I like to turn the opacity of this layer down a bit so I can see the size of the pupil beneath. Now in my case I don’t want to have the whole image reflected but rather just the baby’s face and head. So I resized appropriately, notice that the picture still covers most of the eye picture. But don’t worry about that we’ll deal with that as we go.

 



 

 
3. Now using the eraser tool and selecting a large soft brush erase the top and bottom of the baby image that extends outside of the eye. Don’t worry about the parts that extent off the pupil and iris just yet.

 



 


4. Now making sure you have the layer selected that you want to be the reflection go to Filter>Distort>Spherize. Now keep in mind that irises are not completely round so you may have to play with the settings till it looks right. I used 84% in this case.

 



 

 
 
5. Now you’ll have noticed that this has made our image larger. No worries, simple select the Move tool and you’ll see the free transform box come up. Holding the Shift key to constrain the proportions you can resize so that it fits again.

 



 
 
6. Now while still on the layer with your image to be reflected create a layer mask by selecting the Layer mask Button . The by hitting D you’ll return your background and foreground colors to black and white. Use a large soft brush and select black to begin masking away what you don’t want to see or what extends outside of the desired area. If you make a mistake you can bring it back by painting white.

 
 



 
 
7. Now change the blending mode of your reflection layer to hard light and play with the opacity till it looks about right. Viola you have put a reflection into an eye.


 
 

 If you followed the steps outlined you should end up with a result something like mine below.

 
 
If you liked this tutorial have a look at some of my others. I always appreciate comments on how I can improve these tutorials or if you just like them. Till next time…..