Review: STOIK Red Eye Autofix
By Kempton Smith
Don't you hate it when you discover that the photo you took of Aunt Sally at
her birthday party last night shows her glaring at you with red eyes!
Red eye is one the most common problems we all can have in taking photographs of people if we use a built-in camera flash. It’s not that we can’t take good pictures. Red eye is caused by the reflection of the flash off the retina of the eyes of the subject. It’s a natural phenomenon that’s very difficult to prevent.
Red eye is less of a problem if you use an external flash above or to the side of the camera. With this arrangement, the eyes don’t reflect the flash back into the camera lens.
However, you can get rid of red eyes very easily with a remarkable piece of software. It’s called STOIK Red Eye AutoFix. This software is available here.
Once
you have the software installed on your PC, here’s all you need to do
to fix red eyes from your photos. Copy your photos into a folder on
your computer. You don’t even need to open these images. Just right
click on one or more of the image files in Windows Explorer, choose
option “Fix Red Eye,” and you are done.
You can have more control over the process. Open the software and load your image into the program. You can then fix red eyes automatically and view the results immediately. Alternatively, for even more control, you fix eyes individually using a manual process. First select an eye to restrict the scope of the process and then run Remove.
RedEye AutoFix is a nifty piece of useful software for everyone with a digital camera and a PC. A minor limitation, for me, is that it won’t open raw files.
I can hear a lot of folks mumbling, “But I just use Photoshop for doing this.” Sure you can, but you have to spend big bucks for it, and it takes a great deal of time and effort to learn something like Photoshop. I like my software thin and lean. If all I want to do is fix red eyes, I don’t want to have to spend a lot of time and money on something that does more than I really need.
After I downloaded the software on a 15-day trial basis, I was up and running with it after only about 3 minutes of going through one of the demonstrations built into the program. It costs $29 to use the program beyond the trial period.
STOIK Red Eye Autofix is a well-designed piece of software that all digital camera users with a PC can use.
My Recommendation: Strong Buy
Kempton Smith is a freelance writer and software reviewer. Visit http://www.kemptonsmith.com for more of his articles and reviews. Contact him at kempton@kemptonsmith.com if you would like him to review your software.