Eye Photo Merge Iris Project - Help Needed

[boomslang001]

Hey, I'm needing some assitance before taking on a client's project, and I'm not sure of their methods or the best way to do it going forward. The client's project idea is to take 20-30 subpar photos, with plenty of obstructions from eye lids and lashes, and combine them into a single artistic image of the iris and pupil isolated. According to them, they recently began doing these with little Photoshop experience and can do 2-3 within an hour.

Without wanting to sink too much time into it, I approached the project the way someone would if they were trying to merge photos for an HDR effect or to highlight details of the night sky in photos taken from a tripod with slight movement. I couldn't get anything close to what they've done without doing a whole lot manually. Is there a better way to align, merge, and blend these images? Is this a situation where a little generational fill or other ML/AI technique could assist?

Here's an example of a final image and the cluster of images the client intends to provide me to work from:


Thank you so much!

[chrisg11235813]

I feel like they are using blending modes between individual layers. Maybe an adjustment layer (?)

The iris is probably roughly the same shape / size in each image, make an elipse selection of the iris (with a fixed size), cut and paste into a new document. Do this for every image, pasting into a "master" document.  All of the Irises should be lined up (and the same size). Play with the blending modes -- if you get what you want use that for the rest.

[Conrad_C]

Have you already experimented with the stack modes? That’s Scripts > Load Files into Stack (with auto-align and Smart Object options selected), then try the different commands on the menu Layer > Smart Objects > Stack Mode?