Summary: Learn how to not only enhance the brightness and color of someone's eyes but also how to add blur streaks that zoom out from the center!

Written by Steve Patterson
Exclusively for Photoshop Essentials.com.

Part of our complete collection of Photo Effects tutorials.

In this Photoshop Effects tutorial, we'll learn how to give someone's eyes a fun, easy to create "zoom" effect, with blur streaks that appear to zoom out from the center of the eyes.

We'll also bump up the brightness and color saturation of the eyes at the same time, all using Photoshop's Radial Blur filter, a basic selection tool, a simple layer mask, and a layer blend mode!

Here's the photo I'll be starting with:

Here's what the final result will look like:

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Let's get started!

Step 1: Select The Elliptical Marquee Tool

I'm going to start with the eye on the left of the photo. We'll go through the steps needed to create the effect in one eye, then it's simply a matter of repeating the same steps for the other eye. To begin, select the Elliptical Marquee Tool from the Tools panel. By default, it's hiding behind the Rectangular Marquee Tool, so click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool and hold your mouse button down until a fly-out menu appears listing the other tools that are available in that same spot. Choose the Elliptical Marquee Tool from the list:

Step 2: Select The Iris

We're going to use the Elliptical Marquee Tool to draw a selection around the iris (the colored part of the eye). In my case, because the upper part of the iris is covered by the woman's eyelid, selecting the iris with the Elliptical Marquee Tool will be a two-step process.

I'll begin by clicking and dragging out a selection outline around the iris, ignoring for the moment that the top of my selection is extending up into the eyelid. You can reposition the selection outline as you're drawing it, which is often helpful for getting the selection exactly where you need it, by holding down your spacebar, dragging the selection outline into position, then releasing your spacebar and continuing to drag out the selection:

To remove the part of the selection that extends over the eyelid, with the Elliptical Marquee Tool still selected, I'll choose the Intersect With Selection option in the Options Bar by clicking on its icon:

A small "x" will appear in the lower right of my mouse cursor, letting me know I'm in the Intersect With Selection mode. Then, with my initial selection still active, I'll click and drag out a second selection around just the part of my initial selection that I want to keep, which is everything except for the top area that extends over the eyelid. We can see in the screenshot that the top of my second selection is cutting off the unwanted top area of my initial selection:

With my second selection outline in place, I'll release my mouse button, and because I was in the Intersect With Selection mode, Photoshop keeps only the part of the initial selection that was surrounded by the second selection. The unwanted top area over the eyelid is now gone:

Step 3: Copy The Selection To A New Layer

Next, we'll copy our selection to a new layer. Hold down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key and, with the key still held down, go up to the Layer menu in the Menu Bar along the top of the screen, choose New, then choose Layer via Copy:

Holding down the Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key as we select the command tells Photoshop to first pop open the New Layer dialog box for us so we have a chance to name the new layer before it's added. Name the layer "Left Eye" (or "Right Eye" if you're working on the right eye):

Click OK when you're done to close out of the dialog box. Nothing will seem to have happened in the document window (except that the selection outline will disappear), but we can see in the Layers panel that our selection is now sitting on its own layer directly above the main photo on the Background layer:

Step 4: Draw A Circular Selection Around The Iris

With the Elliptical Marquee Tool still selected in the Tools panel, click in the very center of the pupil (the black area in the center of the eye), then begin dragging out another elliptical selection outline. Once you've started dragging, press and hold Shift+Alt (Win) / Shift+Option (Mac) on your keyboard, then continue dragging. Holding the Shift key down as you drag will force the selection into a perfect circle, while the Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key tells Photoshop to draw the selection outward from the point you clicked on. Draw your circular selection outward until it's just a bit larger than the iris. When you're done, release your mouse button, then release your Shift and Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) keys (make sure you release your mouse button before releasing the keys, otherwise you won't end up with a circular selection):

Step 5: Add Noise To The Selection

Let's add some noise to our selection, which will help to create our blur streaks. For that, we'll use Photoshop's Add Noise filter. Go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Noise, then choose Add Noise:

This opens the Add Noise dialog box. Set the noise Amount to around 10%, then make sure the Gaussian and Monochromatic options are both selected at the bottom of the dialog box:

Click OK to close out of the dialog box. The area inside the selection is now filled with noise:

Step 6: Apply The Radial Blur Filter

With the noise added, go back up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen and this time choose Blur, then Radial Blur:

This opens the Radial Blur filter's dialog box. Increase the Amount value at the top of the dialog box to around 80 or so, then set the Blur Method to Zoom and the Quality to Best. Don't touch the Blur Center box in the lower right of the dialog box. We want to leave the blur center exactly where it is (in the center) so that our blur streaks will appear to be zooming out from the center of our selection:

Click OK to close out of the dialog box. Photoshop applies the blurring to the selection which creates a "zoom" effect from the center of the eye:

Step 7: Turn The Selection Into A Layer Mask

We need to clean up the area around the iris to remove the blur streaks that are extending into the white part of the eye, and for that, we'll use a layer mask. With your selection outline still active, click on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel:

This adds a layer mask to the "Left Eye" layer, and because we had a selection active, Photoshop used the selection to create the mask. If we look at the layer mask thumbnail in the Layers panel, we see that the mask is filled with black except for a small area of white, which is the area that was inside of our selection outline. White areas on a layer mask represent the areas on the layer that are visible in the document, while black represents areas that are hidden:

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