There is an interesting point made here about the trickiness of Photoshopping the reflections of light in eyes. I left a comment on that weblog (Boing Boing) suggesting that the issue might be even more deep and important than Photoshoppers think. I promised to offer something brief here about what Maurice Merleau-Ponty says about the perception of reflections in eyes in his Phenomenology of Perception (1945).
Just how do we experience a reflection in eyes when we look at someone's face? Merleau-Ponty considers how the reflection in human eyes shows up in experience, and he also describes the impact upon our overall experience of the face. He is ultimately making a point about the perception of actual human eyes, but in the quote I'll give, he makes the point by referring to painting (which is perfect for this Photoshop discussion).
"Only after centuries of painting did artists perceive that reflection on the eye without which the eye remains dull and sightless as in the paintings of the early masters. The reflection is not seen as such, since it was in fact able to remain unnoticed for so long, and yet it has its function in perception, since its mere absence deprives objects and faces of all life and expression."*
Merleau-Ponty's point is that the perceptual effect of the reflection on the eye is to give the face "life and expression." What he says next is based upon idea that there are different ways of perceiving this reflection.
"The reflection is seen only incidentally. It is not presented to our perception as an objective, but as an auxiliary or mediating element. It is not seen itself, but causes us to see the rest."*
The idea is that we can perceive an eye-reflection either as a separable object of attention (as a Photoshopper might), or "incidentally" (as the typical viewer of a touched-up photograph might). When viewed in the latter way, the reflection makes an important contribution to our perception of "life and expression" in a face; namely, it mediates that perception; again, seeing an eye-reflection "incidentally" fosters our perception of the "life and expression" in a face.
If this is right, then a Photoshopper aims to get the reflection correct so that when a viewer sees the photo, the reflection can do the proper mediating of the facial expression. A mishandled reflection can make the face look dull, or just plain weird. Maybe this next point is surprising: the conscientious Photoshopper is seeing the reflection in one way, while the normal viewer is perceiving it in another; the import of getting the reflection right only becomes clear to the Photoshopper when she stops focusing on the reflection and perceives it incidentally while looking at the face as a whole.
My own work is on music, and I use this observation in examining musical nuances, which are the minute "expressive variations" made by musicians. I claim that in order to correctly hear the slightly late note sung by Wyclef Jean or Frank Sinatra, we should not focus our attention on its lateness but rather perceive it "incidentally" and thereby allow that note (with others) to mediate a groove. The experience of a rhythmic leaning or pulling arises when we hear these slightly late notes in this way (not when we focus our attention on them).
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* Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (Routledge, 1996), p.309.