Eliminate Red Eye in digital point-n-shoot cameras. Review on Eliminating the Red Eye Effect in Photographs

Some have mentioned red-eye as a challenge to photography which is hard to avoid.

I believe Red-eye happens because our Pupil parts of our eyes are wide open and the flash gets reflected from the insides of our eyes(epithelium) which has red blood vessels. To avoid red-eye(or minimize it) the Pupils have to be not wide open. To enable that - one needs to shine bright light or emit a series of short'pre-flashes' so the Pupil gets closed and the red color doesn't get reflected back.

Avoiding red-eye is simply

achieved by choosing the relevant flash-mode in your camera. My tutorial here is based on the Canon IXUS 860 but most late model IXUS cameras have these same modes.

The following are all the

flash modes for the Canon IXUS 860.

*Auto, Auto w/ Red-Eye

Reduction, Auto w/ Slow Synchro, Flash On, Flash-On w/ Red-Eye

Reduction, Flash On w/ Slow Synchro, Flash Off*

Now any mode from above that says ’Red-eye reduction’ should work(e.g. two modes above . Pretty simple isn't it:)

’Auto w/ Red-Eye Reduction’ &

’Flash-On w/ Red-Eye Reduction’

which

essentially give out a few small bursts of pre-flash before the major

flash burst(or none) so that peoples’ pupils are closed down and red-eye is

minimized). With point-n-shoot cameras like these with on-board flash

• red-eye is a little hard to avoid but the above modes will help

minimize red-eye.

Most late-model non-Canon cameras will also have similar red-eye preventive modes. Consult the manual - it will have details.

Now you can say - well I have already taken a few pictures with red-eye and how do I correct those? Most photo-editing software(PICASA is my favourite which is free) does have methods for this. I love PICASA from Google. You will too!

In Picasa2 - open your'offending' image with red eye(s):)

In the first tab(Basic fixes) locate the'red eye' button. The rest is self explanatory and lucidly explained by the software. You select the red parts and PICASA2 makes them black. Pretty simple:)

Hope that helps.

-Manobendra