Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Fixing Red Eye with EasyShare

Red eye is that demonic look your subjects exhibit when flash reflects off their retinas. Even if you use the techniques described in Chapter 3 to avoid red eye, sometimes this problem’s inevitable, especially when your subject has blue eyes.

Fortunately, red eye is fixable in most cases (unless your subject is truly evil). Easy-Share gives you two different ways to correct red-eye, but neither works 100 percent of the time. You find both methods in Edit view (Edit → Edit). First, select your photo. Then, at the top of the Edit window, click the Red Eye button, and you see instructions to the left of your photo. At this point you have two choices:

• Auto Correct. The big Auto Correct button in the left panel is a good place to start. Click it, and EasyShare tries to identify parts of your photo that look like overly red eyes and attempts to give the eyes a more natural look by changing them to a color of its choosing, usually brown or blue.

• Search and destroy. If the Auto Correct button didn’t find the red eyes, or changed something it shouldn’t have, then you can provide an assist. In this second method, you point out the offending eyes: Zoom in with the slider at the bottom of your photo. You can also position the photo using the scroll bars on the side and bottom. When you have a good view of the eyes that need to be fixed, drag a small box around the eyes. When you release the mouse button, EasyShare applies its red-eye fix to the selected area. ...