Get The Red Out

Don't worry - those red eyes in your photos don't mean that your family and friends are possessed by some demon... your pics are suffering from "red eye"!

Red eye is actually caused by the flash bouncing off the blood vessels of the retina at back of the eye because the subject's pupils are dilated. Unfortunately, it is almost totally unavoidable with cameras that have the flash mounted in them. It is the result of the combination of the flash being too near to the lens and photographing in dark places - where you need the flash most. A couple of ways to diminish, if not totally get rid of it are:

1. Try to get your subject close to a light souce, such as a lamp or a window. Turn on all the lights in a room, or have your subject look at a light sources briefly before you take the picture. This constricts the pupils and gives you less of a chance of red eye.
   
2. If you have a flash that is not permanently attached to the camera, try to get your flash up and away from the lens. There are many different brands of flash brackets, the most popular being by Stroboframe. The flash bracket serves a dual purpose in that you will eliminate red eye and it it will drop the shadows behind your subject.
   
3. If you can't get a flash bracket, but you have a model of flash that allows bouncing off a ceiling, this will diminish red eye, too. Bounce flash also gives a nice soft lighting, compared to the harsh light of direct flash. You do have to compensate with the lens aperture (if you are using manual mode) for bounce flash, as the light to subject distance increases. Make sure your ceiling is 8 feet or less and white, too, or else your photo will be dark or will take on the color of the paint!
   
4. Most point and shoot cameras have a red eye mode on the flash. This is that crazy strobe light that you see before the actual flash. Its job is to send out that crazy stobe to constrict the pupils as I was talking about above, so that the regular flash doesn't bounce off the retina through a dilated pupil.
   
5. For photos that already have red eye in them:

Red eye pens work very well on regular prints. I have not had very good luck with them with digital prints from ink jet printers, however.

There are many photo-editing programs that have a red eye tool in them. Also, online photo processing sites usually have that feature, as do most of the photo enlargement machines that you find at retailers.