How to make eyes POP - part 1

Hi tellywacker and everyone else who was interested in this tutorial. I saw the request for this and I thought “oh perfect, I just did something like this the other day, and I have Photoshop 7.0.” so I hope this tutorial helps you :)

The first thing you want to do, of course, is open the photo of the eyes you want to apply this effect to. [File>Open>your_picture.jpg]
(I will be using my own photo.)

Now if you want to keep your original picture without making any permanent changes to it, click the icon at the bottom of the History window that says “create new document from current state” as shown here:

(I always do this so that I won’t accidently save the changes to the original picture, but of course this is optional.)

Duplicate the background layer [Layer>Duplicate Layer] or just click and drag the background layer to the “create new layer” icon at the bottom of the Layers window. The only reason we do this is just in case we mess up we still have the original to work with without having to open it up again.

Depending on how close up the eyes are in your picture, you may want to zoom in some. [The little magnifying glass in the Tools window].
Select the Dodge Tool: brush: soft round
Range: highlights
Exposure: 40%
With the Dodge Tool brush around the iris along all the lighter parts of the eye and wherever you want it to pop the most. If you want it exactly like the sample photograph then just brush underneath the pupil going with the curve of the eye of course. I just did three strokes like that, but you can do however many you want to get your desired effect.
(Always remember to SAVE (ctrl-s if you are using a PC) every once in awhile.)

Now that we are done highlighting the lighter parts of the eye, let’s darken the darker parts of the eye. This is what makes it POP.
Select the Burn Tool: brush: soft round (a smaller size, like 20-30px)
Range: midtones
Exposure: 42%
With the Burn Tool we’re going to brush around the edges of the iris. You can either do this by hand or trace around the iris with the Pen Tool and stroke the path with the Burn Tool. I chose the latter so that it would be a more crisp line.
To do this select the Paths tab and click the “create new path” icon at the bottom of the Paths window.
Make sure that you have the Direct Selection Tool (circled in red) selected and then choose the Ellipse Tool (circled in blue). It should be in paths mode (circled in green).
Now click and drag a circle around your iris, but around the inner edge so that we can burn the inner edge of the iris.