Adobe Photoshop Tutorials - Photo Editing and Retouching

Photoshop Tutorials: Shadowy, Sultry Eyes

Learn Adobe Photoshop with Photoshop Tutorials At Photoshop Essentials.com

Summary: Nothing seems to have the power to captivate us quite like a person's eyes, and in this tutorial, we bump up that power even more with a shadowy, sultry look.

Written by Steve Patterson
Exclusively for Photoshop Essentials.com.

Part of our complete collection of Photo Retouch tutorials.

When it comes to grabbing our attention, nothing seems to have the power to captivate us more than a person's eyes, and in this Photoshop tutorial, we're going to learn a fashion retouching technique to see how easy it is to give someone's eyes a shadowy, sultry look to them. We're also going to be bringing out their colors, adding some highlights, and generally making them look sharper. Keep in mind that this is an "icing on the cake" type of effect, to be done only after an image has already been corrected for tone and color.

Here's the image I'll be using for this tutorial:

The original image

And here's our final effect:

The original image

Let's get started.

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Step 1: Create A New Layer And Name It "Shadows"

With my image open in Photoshop, I currently have one layer, the Background layer, containing my image:

The Layers palette in Photoshop

Photoshop Tutorials: Photoshop's Layers palette currently showing just the Background layer.

I need to create a new blank layer which is going to hold the shadows, so I'm going to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+N (Win) / Command+Shift+N (Mac) to bring up the New Layer dialog box:

The New Layer dialog box in Photoshop

Photoshop Tutorials: Use the keyboard shortcut to bring up Photoshop's "New Layer" dialog box.

I'm going to name my new layer "shadows", as circled in red above, and then click OK. Photoshop adds my new blank "shadows" layer above my Background layer:

The new shadows layer in the Layers palette

Photoshop Tutorials: The Layers palette now showing the new "shadows" layer above the Background layer.

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