# Fixing closed eyes



## tylerpeyton (Nov 18, 2010)

I am trying to get pictures for my father in law's funeral and there is a great picture of him but his eyes are closed. I have photoshop elements but haven't used it yet and can't seem to get the clone stamp and layer thing. I also use picnik. Can you tell me how I can do this in a step by step process or can someone do it for me?


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## WereBo (Apr 5, 2008)

Hi tylerperton and welcome to TSF, doubly so to Photographers Corner :wave:

Unfortunately, eyes are amongst the trickiest things to mend in a photo. If you have another photo with the eyes open and the head's at the same perspective as the other photo (i.e. straight on, from 1 side etc.), then the eyes can be copied and pasted across but.... 

There's always a but :wink: 

You'd need to manipulate the eyes image to match the lighting, skin tones, size etc. while still keeping the iris's natural colour, then very carefully blend the edges of the image to overlay the closed eyes in the wanted picture, otherwise the joins will stand out like a sore thumb.

Depending on the specific photos, it might be easier to copy 'n' paste the eyes individually - If you're lucky, you might be able to do them in 1 image but you might get the bridge of the nose too, depending on the face's proportions.

I'd estimate it would take about 1-2 hours of work, from start to finish for someone with average or above skills - Longer for a beginner or fairly new user, but it would be a wonderful lesson to complete, you'd learn a helluva lot of techniques and skills :grin:

If you don't have another photo to copy the eyes from, you'll need very good artistic painting skills, cos they'll have to be painted in manually.

Unfortunately, I can't really help with the Adobe Elements as I have Corel's PhotoPaint 12, they call a lot of the same things (filters and tools mainly) by different names (I suspect just to be different :laugh and the layout and menu-locations are totally different too.

1 word of advice though - Don't work on your original picture, put it safe in a separate folder somewhere then make a copy to work on - You never know when something major will happen :wink:


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## Mack (Nov 8, 2004)

I might be able to do it for you. Send me a link if you want it done and I'll do what I can.


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