Didja ever notice how sometimes eyes turn out too dark? But you know those pretty colors are there! I’m going to show you a real quick, down and dirty way of lightening and jazzin’ up those eyes.

Hit ‘M’ to bring up the Marquee Tool. Well, not hit… you get what I mean. I am in no way responsible for any damages that result from mah peepull punching their keyboards.

• We need the circle one, so ‘Shift-M’ will cycle through the shapes.
• Once you get one eyeball selected, hold your Shift key as you select to add to the selection.
• If you hold your space bar as you select, it will move your selection frame. Let go of the space bar, and it will enlarge or shrink the selection.

These key strokes may be awkward at first, but once you get it down, it will save you tons of time.

Let’s make an adjustment to our selection. We need to take the eyelashes out of that selection. Which, by the by, how unfair is it that boys get eyelashes like these?! Anyway, if you’ve never used Quick Mask to alter a selection, you’re gonna love this!

• ‘Q’ puts you in Quick Mask mode.
• ‘D’ makes sure the default colors are selected.
• ‘B’ picks up your Brush.
• ‘[' makes your brush smaller, ']‘ makes your brush bigger.

Now sweep your brush across the eyelashes to subtract them from the selection. If you make a mistake, ‘X’ flips your colors so now you’re doing the opposite. ‘X’ flips them back again. Or Undo (Cmd/Ctrl + Z) can be your new best friend.

When you’re happy with your selection, hitting ‘Q’ again takes you out of Quick Mask Mode.

Let’s feather our selection to take the hard edge off a little bit. Feather your selection 2 pixels. You can do this EITHER by the Menu; Select –> Feather and enter ’2′ OR the shortcut; Cmd/Ctrl + Opt/Alt + ‘D’.

P.S. I’m sorry for any hand cramps that result from all these crazy shortcuts. I’m just doing this because I love you.

You’re going to understand when you have your own little Photoshop tutorials someday. *hand to forehead*

Here’s where the magic happens, mah peepull.

• Make a new layer. Lower right-hand corner of your Layers palette, next to the trash can.
• ‘D’ to make sure our colors are set to default.
• Cmd/Ctrl + Del to fill the selection with white.

AAAGGGHHHHHH! Zombie kid! No, not really. I jest. Mostly. He’s 12, so sometimes I wonder. Kenai gedda widness?!

Then Cmd/Ctrl + D to Deselect.

Next we’re going to make a blending change on our new layer. Change ‘Normal’ to ‘Soft Light’.

Whooooaaaa! Too much! Let’s dial it down a couple notches.

Change the Opacity from 100%, just play with it until you’re happy with the effect. I chose 50%.

Try this on different colors of eyes! It’ll make ‘em pop right outta the picture!