External flash. I had a Gary Fong lightsphere, with bowl-top pointed at the model, but too much flash I guess.
I don't like the catchlights, to me they seem too close to the centres of the eyes, plus they are blown and have red fringing
1. What is a good technique to fix this in PP?
2. How might I avoid this in the future, as in get the catchlights out on the iris while the model is looking at me?
You must have had a pretty long focal length to get the catch that close to the center of the eye. That is red eye, fwiw.
A shorter focal length lens would have changed the angle a bit moving the catchlight off the pupil. Also remember, the closer a flash is to the subject, the softer it will appear.
Also putting the flash further off camera, either through a flash bracket or completely off-camera will get rid of that.
As far as fixing it goes, I think David's technique has got ya covered.
First fixed white dots with healing brush. Then created a new layer and painted with brush white shape on one of the eyes. Gaussian blurred it at 8. Copied the shape (CTRL + ALT + SHIFT) to the other eye and changed the opacity of the layer to something more acceptable (75% I think it was) and voila...
If you want a round one, it's easy, just use a regular round brush, not too soft, but not totally hard-edged. Just size the brush to the size ya want, use a really light gray, and click where ya want. You'll probably want opacity at near 100%.
Square catches would be harder, because as light follows the contour of the eye, it would warp the sides. That is, if you want it to look convincing.
To avoid in the future don't have the model look directly at the lens. Tell her to look at the corner of the camera or at your knuckle on the camera...it will still give the same impression of looking directly of the lens but avoid the whole red eye effect.
