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Want to get that sparkle in the eyes of your portrait subjects? Here’s the “how-to” - first in the field and then in Photoshop.

They say eyes are the windows to the soul. I don’t know about that but I do know a person’s eyes in any portrait draw our attention first. Powerful eyes with a sparkle can have a lot more impact than eyes that are dull with the flat light.

My motto is “never do it on the computer if you can do it right in the field.” So use a flash equipped with a bounce card. Flash units such as Canon’s top-of-the-line 580EX II and Nikon’s SB-800 have built in flash cards. It looks like this. All you have to do is pull the card up, aim the flash toward the ceiling, and the light from the flash will provide the perfect “catch light” - or sparkle in the eyes. This works when shooting most animals, too.

Studio lights - or even natural daylight if you have time to get the set up right with a reflector - can also help you get that catch-light look. But the important thing here is to remember the need for a catch-light while doing the set up in the first place.

Now, the problem I have with mottoes is that they are sorta like diets - I never stick to them. I like to mount my flash when it’s needed, but I get a little bit laaaaaaaaaazy. Or sloppy. Or whatever. But what do I do when that sparkle just isn’t there?

That’s when we turn to Mr. Photoshop. Here’s a technique you can try and it works extremely well.

1. Open the image in Photoshop
2. Use the marquee tool, or better yet the eliptical marquee tool, to draw a circle around one of the eyes. It won’t be perfect but don’t worry about that.
3. Hold down the shift key and do the same for the other eye.
4. Now hit Command-J (if you’re using a Mac) or Ctrl-J (in Windows). This will create a layer based on the eyes you just circled.
5. In the pull-down menu at the top of the layers window, choose hard light.
6. Go to the filter menu and select Stylize, then Emboss
7. In the dialog menu that pops up, set the angle to about 135-degrees, the heigh to 2 pixels, and the amount to 300%, then click OK.
8. Switch to the eraser tool and, making sure you’ve selected the layer you just created) begin to erase everything except the iris of the eye (the colored part of the eye). Be sure to clear the filter from the white parts of the eye and all the skin around.
9. Now go back to your layers menu and lower the opacity. I find that 60-70% works well for people. But this technique also works for animals and for some reason, less opacity seems to work better for them: 10-40%. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe we don’t want animals with human-appearing eyes!

Now you’re done! Flatten the layers and you now have a photo with the eyes a bit more twinkly than they were before.

In the two example photos below, it may be difficult to detect the difference. That’s okay - it’s supposed to be a very subtle effect. But if you look at the images closely, and particularly the eyes of my son, Adam, on the right, I think you can see an important difference.

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