A retouch of the eyes is on every portrait photographer’s image editing to-do list. This important alteration is also one of the easiest adjustments to spot when unintentionally overdone. See how this Lightroom-specific technique will help bring out that shine in your subjects eyes, without pushing things too far.

I am a genuine fan of keeping my postproduction life as simple as possible. That’s why this brief, but quality Lightroom-based approach from Sony Artisan Chris Orwig is so good. When it comes to known methods for retouching the eyes in postproduction, things can get out of control quickly. At your disposal are a countless number of overlapping tools. One way to limit that madness, is to maintain your eye editing within Lightroom, and avoid taking a wrong turn and getting lost inside of Photoshop.

In his example portrait, Orwig uses a combination of Lightroom selective adjustment tools. A combination of both the radial filter and adjustment brush produce the desired exposure bump in the eyes. To get a better sense of the edit, Orwig purposely starts out aggressive, and after establishing his sliders, pulls back the overall exposure in one fell swoop. A simple collapse of all sliders provides an efficient way to increase or decrease the exposure effect. Check it out for yourself. It’s a nice workflow to add to your Lightroom bag of tricks.