My tutorial on recreating Max's eyes is featured in the photoshopretouch section ("fixing white reflective pet eyes") at:

Max 2

This image was created using Photoshop6 and Painter 7. Immediately below is the completed image, followed by a close-up showing more detail of the Painter 7 watercolor brushstrokes. Further below is a tutorial showing how I recreated Max's true eye color.

On the left, is the original scan, note Max's eyes and the color cast. On the right is the color corrected image. The image was scanned at 600dpi at 150%. The original image was a small photo (2.2 x 2.9 inches) so scanning at 150% gave me a bit more image to work with. I generally always scan at 600dpi which gives me more flexibility with the end size of the image. Further below, see the tutorial on how I recreated Max's eyes.

In Painter, I created the sketch of Max below.

Below is a close-up of the final watercolor image. Another image of Max done using Painter's watercolor brushes can be seen here Max and the horse trailer.

Recreating Max's eyes using Photoshop:

Below is a close up of Max's eyes. I was having a terrible time trying to recreate Max's eyes when I received the April 2001 issue of Maximum PC which is not normally a place I look for graphic tips but the technique they outlined worked quite well I think. I've listed the steps I followed. Note, all work was done at 600 dpi and I'm pc based so the Photoshop shortcuts are the Windows ones, if a mac person would email me 74727.3164@compuserve.com the mac shortcuts I'd be happy to add them.

Steps:

1.In Photoshop, use the Magic Wand to get the bad pupil portion of one eye (very often what you will have is the more classic 'red-eye' in the pupil area). You may need to play around with the tolerance setting, I used 20 to get all the white of the pupil and I had 'continguous' check marked so I didn't inadvertantly select more than what I really wanted.

2.Hold the shift key and click again in the other eye.

3.Feather (Select > Feather or ctrl-alt-d) 2 pixels

4.Save the selections (Select > Save Selection or right click and choose 'save selection') naming it "both pupils"

5.Desaturate the Image (Image > Adjust > Desaturate or ctrl-shift-u)

6.With black as your foreground color, use the Airbrush tool, at about 20% opacity to paint the area you've just selected. Choose a brush size that is just about the same size as the area you selected (I used a 35pixel brush).

7.Placing the airbrush off center of the selection, click a few times working around the selection to get a kind of feathered edge as close to black as you can--this forms the pupil of the eye, then I clicked once, centering the airbrush in the selected area. Repeat on the other eye. Here's what it should look like.

8.Deselect (Select > Deselect or ctrl-d)

9.Using the Lasso tool, select the entire iris, feather 3 pixels (in PS6, you can do that in one step by setting "feather" to 3 in the in the tool bar), hold the shift key and select the other eye remembering to save and name the selection (Select > Save Selection or right click and choose "save selection")

10.Put the selection on a new layer Layer > New > Layer via copy or ctrl-J) and name the new layer (alt-double click on the layer)

11.Colorize using Hue/Saturation (Image > Adjust > Hue/Saturation or ctrl-u) with 'colorized' checked. I used Hue=209, Saturation=28, Lightness=-22. Here's what they look like.

Note that in Photoshop, the background would be the standard grey/white checkerboard as it would be transparent and I've surrounded the image by a black border to set it off...otherwise the eyes just float kind of disembodied on this page.

12.Deselect (Select > Deselect or ctrl-d)

13.Add a new layer (Layer > New > Layer or ctrl-shift-n) and name it (alt-double click on the layer) to add highlights. This is the tricky bit. I used the Airbrush tool at about 10% opacity with the color white, and a small soft painting brush (13)

14.You can use the opacity setting on the layers palette to play with both the eyes layer and the highlight layer.

More tlb images: