🚀 go-pugleaf

twister1@mindless.com (Twister) wrote:
>In Photopaint 8, you can achieve a similar effect by masking the eyes
>on the photo and then using the Image, Adjust, Color Hue and adding
>the colour hue that you want.

That's what the online help recommends, but I've tried it and I can't see how
changing a glowing red eye into a glowing cyan eye does you any good at all.
You have to get into changing the brightness/intensity. I've tried
desaturating, but the eyes come out looking like Little Orphan Annie. And
I've tried just darkening with various kinds of brushes, and it comes out
looking terrible. I'm not enough of an artist. 

What I'd like is a round overlay that has the effect of darkening in the
center, tapering appropriately to the edges, of appropriate diameter. I'm
using PP and I'm new to it. I'm now doing for red-eye is:

        1) create a round mask covering the iris of the eye
        2) create an object
        3) create a radial-gradient bucket fill, dark in the center, white at
           the edge.
        4) bucket-fill the round mask on the object layer with the radial
           gradient
        5) set the object merge type to "multiply". (This will darken in
           the center while still retaining some of the original hue.)
        6) adjust the object merge "opacity" slider to get the desired 
           level of center darkening. (30-50% usually works for me; you 
           want to leave a bit of "glint" in center of the eye still.)
        7) repeat 1-6 for each additional red eye.

However, this is a little tedious. More than a little tedious. 

1) Is there a better way to do red-eye than this? Can the above recipe be
improved on/simplified?

2) the radial-gradients that the program generates appear to be straight
interpolations. A curving fall-off in the darkening would work better here.
Can I diddle a gamma, for example, somewhere?

3) thanks

Garry