1. Clouded still
There’s a little work left on the baby photo we worked with last week: the somewhat dejected eyes could do with a little brightening up.

We could save and load the photo in a normal editing software but that would be one round too many since the task can be done in Lightroom too before converting the RAW picture.

2. Iris corrector
Our first task is to select the appropriate tool, namely the only brush-based tool in Lightroom (2.0+), the healing brush. It is to be found on the right in the upper icon row of Develop window.

You don’t have to rummage through the piles of sliders, just select Effect menu and within that click on Iris Enhance. This is a preset designed especially for brightening the eyes, the iris. Beside brightness it also enhances saturation and clarity/contrast.

3. Brush-up
Down in the Brush section select a brush size to your liking, one which is comfortable to use within the eye area. It’s a good idea to set the zoom 1:1 or even bigger to make it easier to work on this section.

With careful strokes, paint over the white of the eyes and the colorful iris.

To exit from healing brush mode, click on its icon again.

4. Angry look
The above image shows the result. If you bring the mouse pointer over the picture, you can compare with the original state. Brighter eyes will make the face appear more expressive and the photo becomes more “catchy”. As the saying goes: “The eyes are windows to the soul.”