Red eye reduction

My dad called me today asking about what software I use for red eye removal. Evidentally, the software he uses does not modify the JPEG image, but creates a small file that contains the edits. Presumably, you then need the specific software program to view the modified image.

This was my two-bit review for my dad:

The Microsoft Office Picture manager - well, it sucks for red eye removal.

Picasa is a free package. Google bought the company last year and the Picasa editing software is free. However, I don’t think it’s been updated since – if that continues, I suspect it will lag behind. However, as of today, the abilities of the program are pretty neat. It looks like it will run on Windows 98. The only picture it couldn’t handle was PC280053; apparently one of the red eyes was too pink for detection. Otherwise, it seemed pretty good for red eye reduction.
Download Picasa

I then putzed around and saw that I had Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Kit. This was pretty easy - but you need to 'import' the images into the program… although, when I edited the red eye in the PC280053 file, it saved the file as “PC280053_edited.JPG” in the same directory as the original picture. So I suspect “import” is just an akward term. The red eye tool was really easy, however. Just draw a box around both eyes, click a button, and it worked.
Download Adobe Photoship Album Starter Kit

I’d download both of these today just in case they go away at some point...

These are (currently) both programs that are free of charge.