Digital Focus: Clear Up Red-Eye, Photo Downloading Tips

Imaging tips for removing red eyes, plus how to download photos while on vacation.

Dave Johnson

Clearing Up the Dreaded Red-Eye

Unless you're chief cinematographer for a horror movie, you probably don't go out of your way to include red-eyed monsters in your photos. But in many situations, that's exactly what you get. Red-eye is the common term for what happens when you take a flash picture in low light, such as indoors at a party or outdoors after sunset.

Here's the quick Dr. Science explanation: In low light, your subjects' eyes are fully dilated to make better use of the limited lighting; that makes their pupils, which are quite reflective, huge. When you fire the camera flash, the light reflects off your subjects' retinas, and you've just turned your subjects into extras from a John Carpenter film. Thankfully, there are ways to avoid this ugly effect.

Use the Camera's Red-Eye Mode

If your camera has a red-eye reduction mode--and these days, most do--start there. Set your camera's flash to red-eye mode, and it'll "pre-flash" before taking the actual picture. That means it'll fire several times, almost like a strobe, to force your subjects' pupils to close a bit. That should reduce or eliminate the red-eye effect.

Red-eye mode has its limitations, though. The human eye can't adjust to a change in lighting instantly, so the red-eye control on your camera usually just minimizes the effect--it often doesn't eliminate it.

More frustrating is the delay between when you press the shutter release and when the picture is actually taken. You'll experience a perilous pause while the flash does its little strobe act. If you're not anticipating the delay, your subject may move, or you might jiggle the camera just when the picture is actually taken.

Take the Red Away Automatically

So what if you end up with some red-eye in your photos? Many image editors make it easy to wipe it out in just a few simple steps. Take Paint Shop Pro, for instance. You can download Paint Shop Pro for free.

Load the picture with the offensive red eyes and choose Effects, Enhance, Red-eye Removal. You should see the Red-eye Removal dialog box, which shows both the original image and a preview of the finished effect.

Drag the picture around so you can see the red-eye in the window, and zoom in if you need to get a better view of the red eyes. Click and drag in the window on the left until you've made a circle about the same size as the eye. Then position the circle over the red part of the eye. You should see the effect of your edits in the window on the right.

You can make a lot of additional adjustments, such as varying the eye color, iris size, and even adding a little glint to the eye. When you're satisfied, just click OK to save your new eyes.

Manual Labor

Even if your image editor doesn't have a red-eye removal feature, you can rough it on your own. The trick is simply to paint over the red with a color (such as black or dark blue) that mimics the subject's real eye color. You can just grab a paintbrush from the program's tool palette and start swabbing, but you'll get better results if you select the red region first.

Try the Magic Wand tool. Magic Wands are designed to select all of the neighboring pixels in an image with roughly the same color. And since the eye is full of varying shades of red, this is a great application for the Magic Wand. Select the tool and click the red in the eye. You may need to hold down the Shift key and click several times to "group select" all of the red. Once you're done selecting, just paint over the red with the appropriate eye color and you're done. Take a look at an eye that has been repaired in this way.

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Mini Review: Ricoh RDC-i700

In the future, everyone will fly in hovercars...and all portable devices will have wireless modems built in. Spurring us along the way toward that Jetson-esque vision is the Ricoh RDC-i700, a digital camera that Ricoh bills as "Internet ready." When equipped with a CompactFlash-style wireless modem or connected to a cellular phone, the RDC-i700 can transmit photographs, along with graphical annotations and text messages, to e-mail accounts, FTP accounts, and fax machines.

It captures great-looking images in resolutions up to 3.3 megapixels and has features typical of a high-end digital camera, such as a 3X optical zoom and a high-quality close-up macro mode. On the other hand, it's a Ricoh camera--and that means it relies on the same clumsy, non-camera-like flip-up LCD display that I usually dislike.

Ricoh has priced the RDC-i700 around $1300 and clearly hopes it will attract the attention of businesses that can benefit from the ability to wirelessly transmit digital images directly from an on-the-scene camera to a remote destination. That includes real estate agents, insurance adjusters, film location scouts, criminal investigators, and photojournalists, to name a few.

That's a lot of money, though, in a market that's crowded with similar non-wireless 3-megapixel cameras that cost a few hundred dollars less. Even as a journalist who sometimes has to photograph trade shows and press conferences, I don't see the need for on-location transmission; my editors can typically wait a few hours for me to e-mail pictures from the press room. I'm not sold, but will enough other people see the value for the RDC-i700 to succeed?

Q&A: Downloading Pictures on Vacation

A 16MB memory card, standard with most digital cameras, typically only holds a dozen hi-res pictures. Even a 128MB card can only hold 96 hi-res pictures. When you are on vacation for several weeks, chances are you will probably shoot more than 96 pictures. Is there a device available that will allow you to download your memory card so you can then re-use your memory card to take more pictures?

-- Dale Anderson, Sarnia, Ontario, Canada

Indeed, 100 pictures sounds like a lot until you realize that's the equivalent of just a few rolls of film; many people take more than that on a family vacation.

You have two choices. Your first option is expensive and a bit clumsy: You can buy several memory cards and swap them out like film. A better alternative, I think, is to get a device that can download the images from the memory cards and store them for you until you get home. One such device is the Digital Wallet from Minds@Work.

Personally, I like the Digital Wallet because it's battery operated, has 20GB of storage space, and can accept common digital camera memory cards such as CompactFlash and SmartMedia. After you transfer the images from a memory card to the Digital Wallet, erase the memory card and keep shooting.

Send your questions to question@bydavejohnson.com, and please be sure to let me know where you're from.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $10 and $100.

Here's how to enter:

Send us your photograph in JPG format, at a resolution no larger than 640 by 480 pixels, to hotpic@pcworld.com. Larger entries will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo, along with a short description of the photo and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering please read the full description of the contest rules and regs.

This Week's Hot Pic:

Skating by Pat Harrington, Vallejo, California

This photo is a great demonstration of the beauty of simplicity. Pat has included a sharp geometric shape--the bowl, which at this angle looks like a straight line--to create a largely two-toned image. He's frozen a skater in the midst of the sea of blue and given our eyes a little relief with a secondary subject, the observer at the top of the bowl. It's a beautiful shot.

Pat says: "I was sitting down inside the bowl at a skate park in Evanston, Wyoming, and had my 9-year-old nephew Kole Jaimez skate by and fly out of the bowl. There were several onlookers, and I was able to catch one of the young boys peering in. It is fun to take the shots and let the kids look at them right away--they love it!"

October's Hot Pic of the Month:

Each month we choose one of our weekly winners to be the Hot Pic of the Month. This month we've chosen Boeing 307, taken by Ken Lee from Port Orange, Florida. Ken has won a CD carrying case. Congratulations, Ken!