raccoon eye transplant steps needed

[suecan]

A while ago I posted a question about improving animal white eye. At that time someone suggested that I replace the raccoon's eyes with those of a different raccoon that had normal eyes. I have come across one in my files and wonder if someone could walk me through the steps of how to replace one set of eyes with those from a different photo. I'm on a mac using PSE 6.
Thanks
Sue

[Diana]

Hi Sue. This is the way I do it:

Open the Good Eyes photo. Use the Elliptical Marquee to make a selection around the eye area. Leave plenty of space around the actual eye in your selection.

Press Command-C to copy.

Open the Bad Eyes photo. Press Command-V to paste.

Get the Move tool and move the pasted eye into place over the bad eye. You'll probably have to resize the pasted eye by dragging one of the corner "handles" of the pasted eye.

Lower the opacity of the pasted eye layer so you can see the bad eye underneath to make it easier to resize and position the new eye. You may need to press Command-T to grab the new eye to reposition it once you lower the opacity, otherwise the pointer may try to grab the layer underneath due to the opacity of the top layer.

Once you get the new eye resized and position over the bad eye, raise the opacity back to 100%.

Get the Eraser tool and select a soft-edged brush on the small size. Erase around the pasted eye to remove the excess, which will also soften the edge to make it blend in to the photo better.

If the color is a little off on the pasted new eye, with that layer active, press Command-L for a Levels adjustment. In the Levels dialog, drag the middle slider a bit to the right or left until the pasted eye matches the photo.

Hope this helps

Diana

[suecan]

Thanks Diana- that worked a treat.
Sue

[suecan]

After trying these steps a few times I have another couple of questions about the process. Is there a better tool than the elliptical marquee to select the eye? Since the eye is an almond shape and somewhat slanted up, the EM doesn't do a great job of selecting it.
Which layer do you highlight in order to use the eraser to soften the edges? I seemed to end up with about 8 layers and couldn't figure out which was which.
Lastly, do you have to put all the layers together at the end, by merging or flattening?
Thanks
Sue

[Diana]

Hi Sue,

After pasting your racoon's new eyes on to your image, double click on the layer name in the layers palette and rename them Left Eye and Right Eye. Renaming layers really helps when you are working with a lot of layers.

Now, it really doesn't matter the shape of the selection around the eye, just make sure you select way more than just the eye. But you can use any selection tool you like, the Lasso tool or the Selection Brush would do just fine, too.

After pasting the eye on, the layer you just pasted will be the active layer. Just use a soft-edged Eraser on that eye layer to erase away the parts around the eye that you don't need. This will leave the part of the eye that's left with a soft edge to blend in to the main image.

Whether you flatten or merge layers when you are finished depends on what you're going to do with the image.

If you're only going to print it yourself, you can just leave the file saved in the PSD format and print it just like that. When you print it, all the visible layers will be printed.

I've flattened images that I thought I was all done with, then went back later deciding to make some changes and wish I had kept the layers intact.

If you plan on having your final image printed by a photo processor, you'll also want to save a version in JPG format to give to the printer. This will automatically be a flattened version.

It's entirely a personal preference what format(s) to keep of your images.

Diana