Photography Techniques For Prevention and Removal
The red-eye effect can be prevented in a number of ways.
- Using bounce flash in which the flash head is aimed at a nearby pale colored surface such as a ceiling or wall or at a specialist photographic reflector. This both changes the direction of the flash and ensures that only diffused flash light enters the eye.
- Placing the flash away from the camera's optical axis ensures that the light from the flash hits the eye at an oblique angle. The light enters the eye in a direction away from the optical axis of the camera and is refocused by the eye lens back along the same axis. Because of this the retina will not be visible to the camera and the eyes will appear natural.
- Taking pictures without flash by increasing the ambient lighting, opening the lens aperture, using a faster film or detector, or reducing the shutter speed.
- Using the red-eye reduction capabilities built into many modern cameras. These precede the main flash with a series of short, low-power flashes, or a continuous piercing bright light triggering the pupil to contract. (This should not be confused with the autofocus assist beam, which uses a series of flashes for focus instead.)
- Having the subject look away from the camera lens.
- Photograph subjects wearing contact lenses with UV filtering.
- Increase the lighting in the room so that the subject's pupils are more constricted.
If direct flash must be used, a good rule of thumb is to separate the flash from the lens by 1/20 of the distance of the camera to the subject. For example, if the subject is 2 meters (6 feet) away, the flash head should be at least 10 cm (4 inches) away from the lens.
Professional photographers prefer to use ambient light or indirect flash, as the red-eye reduction system does not always prevent red eyes — for example, if people look away during the pre-flash. In addition, people do not look natural with small pupils, and direct lighting from close to the camera lens is considered to produce unflattering photographs.
Red-eye removal is built into many popular consumer graphics editing software packages, or is supported through red-eye reduction plug-ins; examples include Adobe Photoshop, Apple iPhoto, Corel Photo-Paint, GIMP, Google Picasa, Paint.NET and Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery. Some can automatically find eyes in the image and perform color correction, and can apply it to many photos at once. Others may require the operator to manually select the regions of the pupils to which correction is to be applied. When performed manually, correction may consist of simply converting the red area of pupils to grayscale (desaturating), leaving surface reflections and highlights intact.
Read more about this topic: Red-eye Effect
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