Expert: Evgenia (Jenny) Grinblo - 1/17/2012

Question
Hello, Jenny! I had a picture taken of me this past weekend, and noticed that my eyes were closed. It's a really special picture to me, and definitely a once in a life-time opportunity that I got to be that close to such an animal. I was wondering if there was any way that you could give me some eyes? I have spent two solid days trying my best, but to no avail. It would mean so much to me if you could..

The picture that I love is:
http://i1162.photobucket.com/albums/q537/kia_newman/p_00095.jpg

And the picture where I have eyes is:
http://i1162.photobucket.com/albums/q537/kia_newman/120114_013.jpg

I tried to send a picture where my face was at the same angle. If you dn't have time for this, or if it's against your policy, I completely understand. I just figured it was worth a shot. Thank you so much for your time :)

Answer
Hi Kiana,

First of all, what is that animal? It looks very impressive!

I'm afraid that I would rather not do retouching via allexperts, because it's really not what I'm here for. Also, the photos you sent me are low resolution, which means that any work I would do would only be viewable online and not printable.

If you like, you can email me at hello@grinblo.com and describe how you tried to work on this, and I can share some thoughts on how you could approach the problem from a different angle.

Sorry I can't help more!

Evgenia


---- Revised: I include my email to Kiana in the hopes that it might help someone in the future -------------

Hi Kiana,

That is a very impressive mountain lion! :)

What I would do in your place would be the following:

I would start by making a copy of the original photo (the one with eyes closed) into a new layer and work to create a blank space where the closed eyes currently are, so you can use that blank space to put the open eyes on top. By blank space, I mean literally manipulating the image to seem as though you have no eyes, and just have skin running over that area of your face.

You can use several tools to do that but a good one to try is the Patch Tool. Another good one is the clone stamp tool. If you've never used those before, there are many great tutorials available online. I prefer video tutorials myself but it's up to you.

Once you no longer have any eyes (creepy but necessary), I would work to place the new eyes over the proper space one by one. First, paste eye #1 in a new layer and work to rotate and resize it so it looks like it fits there. Don't worry about it looking realistic, just make it fit the proportions of your face. Because of both photos were taken from different angles, you may want to use different tools under Edit > Transform.

Once you've done that with both eyes, the tricky bit needs to happen. The shadow over your face makes things extremely complicated because you need to be able to fit the eyes into the existing shadow without having the new shadow mess things up. The first thing I would try is select the layer on which an eye is on and change the blending mode (you can find this in the layer panel, usually set to "normal") to "darken" or "multiply" to see if that allows the eye to blend into the blank canvas you've created for it. You can try to play with the transparency as well.

When the eyes look pretty similar to what you need, you will want to clean up the unnecessary bits around the eyes in one of two methods. The best option is to use a layer mask on the eye layer (I would merge the two eyes into one layer once you'd decided on the size and orientation of the eyes in the earlier step). Do look this up if you haven't used them before. If nothing else, layer masks are an amazing tool to know how to use for future Photoshop efforts.

If you don't want to mess around with layer masks, you can use the eraser tool with a soft brush on a lower transparency setting (between 40%-70%) and work back the edges so the eyes don't have the cut lines around them.

If a lot of the terms I used above are confusing to you, do look them up and it will become clearer. They are actually not difficult techniques to use, but require a bit of familiarity with Photoshop features you may not have used before.

Good luck with this!

PS - if you find that the shadows are really screwing things up for you and you are getting desperate. I would re-take a photo of yourself with a similar light and angle as the photo you need eyes for, and use those eyes instead. The second photo you shared, where your eyes are open, has the problem that your eyes are under a cap and very dark. This might fix that.

All the best to you. I really hope it works out! Don't give up right away. It would take someone with a lot of experience at least 2-3 hours to do this. If this can actually be done, you can do it just as much as anyone else. If not, it might be that the memory of being around that wonderful animal is going to have to make up for the closed eyes photo!