Curing Red-Eye In The Gimp

Not the result of too many late nights, 'red eye' arises when you take flash pictures of people, especially for some reason, pictures of children. The blood vessels in the eye reflect back the light and this makes the eyes look red.

This is such a common problem that, over the years, most makers of photo manipulation software have developed ways of quickly and easily dealing with it and the Gimp is no exception.

How to fix Red Eye in the Gimp
For this exercise you will need a red eye photo. Firstly, load the photo into the Gimp as you would normally. You need to direct the Gimp to the eyes and for this it is best and easiest to use a selection tool. Use either the rectangular selection or the ellipse or the lasso to roughly encircle the eyes. Alternatively, you can zoom in.

Now go to 'Filter' on the main menu and choose 'Enhance' and finally 'Red Eye Removal'.

In the dialog that opens check that the 'Preview' box is checked and decide if you want to resize the whole dialog to a more convenient size so that you can easily see what is going on.

If you do, position the mouse cursor on the extreme right hand bottom corner of the dialog and find the position where the mouse cursor changes to a double-headed arrow. Keeping the cursor in this position, hold down the left mouse button and drag outwards to enlarge the dialog.

Now look carefully at the eyes as shown in the dialog and, if necFree As In Air open source software image of
essary use the '+' and '-' buttons in the dialog to zoom in and out.

To correct red eye, move the slider until the eyes look right. If this is your first time doing red eye removal, it is well worth moving the slider to both extremes to get an idea of the range that the tool will produce.

As soon as you are happy, press 'OK' and the change will be applied.

Improving the tools operation
I have found the tool to be very good but if you want to be more particular then use the ellipse to select just one eye, or zoom in to one eye, and do each one separately.

Using the tool is not, of course, the only way to remove red eye but for most people it is a simple and easy solution to this annoying problem.

Improvements at the camera end
Of course, if you can prevent yourself taking photographs with red eye then this is better, too.

Firstly, check if your camera comes with some form of red eye reduction and, if it does, learn how to use it.

The problem is caused by the flash being located too close to the camera lens and by the lighting in the room being dull (which is why you need flash!). You can help avoid it by increasing the lighting by turning on, for example, a main light or by opening curtains further.

Red eye reduction works well in the Gimp and is very easy and intuitive to use and so it should not be a problem. However, it is always better to be aware of the circumstances and avoid it at the camera if you can.