Can anyone tell me how to make or where to buy some eye reflections? i don't want irises or eye themselves.  i want to be able to add a sparkle, or a reflective image to eyes.  i have only been able to find a few reflections here on Renderosity, most packs come with a ton of eyes and only 1 or 2 eye reflection overlays.
Thanx

Bjbganiere - I've put together this mini tut to show one way of a adding a reflection to an eye. 

Source Pictures.
I have flattened out the existing reflections and highlights in the eye of this source picture to make the end result clearer.  For your reflection image I would suggest something with contrasting colours.

Copy and Paste the reflection image onto the source image.  Resize and postion the reflection image to your choosing.  I prefer to do it this way rather than make a circular selection of the reflection image first and then pasting if to the source image because this way allows you to make adjustments to the size and placement of your reflection image whilst being able to see it in context with the eye.

Change the opacity of the reflection layer so you can see the eye of your source image underneath. Move the relection image around or resize it until you have the part of the relection image that you want to use.  Create a circular selection of the pupil and iris of the eye. 

With the selection still active make sure the reflection layer is selected and press ctrl+j (layer via copy).  Hide or delete the original reflection layer.  Now click on "Add Layer Mask' to the new reflection layer.  With the new reflection layer selected select the Channels tab and select the New Reflection Layer Mask.  Select a radial gradient that goes from white to black and then draw a line with the mouse from the center of the pupil to the edge of the iris.If required you can use the brush to paint with either white to show more of the new reflection layer or black to hide more.  By hiding or showing the New Reflection Layer Mask you can see the effect your changes are having on the source image.

Now go back to your layers tab.  Add a Levels adjustment layer and then a clipping mask layer to confine the levels adjustment to the new reflection layer. 

Adjust the sliders to bring out the highlights of the new reflection layer.  You can also make additional adjustments to the opacity, or blending modes if needed.  You can also go back to the layer mask in Channels if needed and make some fine adjustments to your mask.

The before and after.  I hope this was the type of effect that you were after and this has been of some use to you.

Shane

Great tutorial there Shane.

 

I saved this one to my tutorials folder for sure.

Thanks

 

Tom

Agreed, terrific tutorial and saved here, too.

Yeah, great tut! Saving this puppy myself - thanks!
-Lew ;-)

Glad the tutorial has been useful.  If you guys are anything like me then you have more saved tutorials on your hard drive, USB drives, DVDs etc than you could use in 3 lifetimes.

Shane

shane thanx so muchf ro the tutorial! it has helped a lot! i am still having a problem getting the image to appear clear.  it is still a little cloudy inthe eye.  when i turn the opacity to 0 though you can't see it at all, so i am not quite sure what i am doing wrong.  also i can't find a way when i have the radial gradient tool open to draw a line from the pupil to the iris.  am i just suppose to drag the mouse over it without drawing an actual line? that is what i have been doing.  Thanx again!
Becky

Becky,

Addressing the second part of your question first using the word 'draw' may not have been the best choice of words.  You are not 'drawing' anything on the image like you would with the paint tool.  Clicking the center of the pupil and dragging the mouse to the iris edge displays a line on the screen.  The start and end point that you are defining tells the computer where the white of your gradient starts and then where it finishes with the transition though to black.  By manually adjusting the layer mask you can have tighter control over what part of your reflection image you want visible.  In the image of the tutorial which displays the red of the layer mask you will see that the channels tab is open and the layer mask selected and active.  If you click on the eye icon of the top RGB channel and turn its visibility off and leave the eye icon visible on the layer mask you will see that the only image on screen is the layer mask which is all black with a white spot.  If you feel that your reflection image is two cloudy it may be that not enough white is defined on the layer mask.  To correct this just use your paint tool and adjust the brush size to about half the radius of the existing white spot and adjust the softness of the brush and then paint a white dot in the middle of the existing one.  Now make the RGB channel visible and turn off the layer mask to see what changes have been made.  If you find that the reflection image has now 'bled' over part of the eyelid then just paint on the layer mask in black where the eyelid is.  Once the layer mask is as good as you can get it the next adjustments are made as described in the tutorial by using a levels adjustment layer.  Blending modes can also make a difference.   A neat trick is to select the reflection image layer (not the level adjustment layer) and click on the blending mode window (which is probably displaying 'normal').  This opens all the blending options.  If you click the window again then the window is selected.  If you now roll your middle mouse button you will cycle through each of the blending modes giving you a fast way of checking the effect of each mode.  You will probably find that the 'screen' mode gives a good result for the eye reflection.

Shane

Shane,  I know I'm late to the party, but just saw this tut and wanted to add my sincerest thanks as well.  I've yet to test it out, but have it saved to my HD.  You make it look fairly easy to follow, so hopefully even this relative n00b to PS can follow & figure it out.

Again - thanks so much for taking the time to make this for the rest of the class.

~arry ;)

Very useful ! Thanks

Wow! Been looking for something like this. Thanks!