By Scott Kelby

You want everyone in your pictures to look like a million bucks. Your photo editor can help you make the subjects of your best shots look even better by letting you remove wrinkles, bring new life to the eyes, and touch up the skin.

1. Open your photo.

2. Select the Clone Stamp tool in the toolbox.

3. Go to the Brush Picker in the Options bar and select a soft-edged brush close to the size of the wrinkles you want to remove.

4. Go to the Options bar and lower the opacity of the Clone Stamp tool to 50 percent.

5. Change the Blend Mode to Lighten so you'll only affect the darker pixels.

6. Find a clean area somewhat near the wrinkles -- the upper cheek if you're removing crows feet, for example, or just above or below forehead wrinkles. Hold the Alt/Option key and click once to sample smooth skin from the area.

7. Take the Clone Stamp tool and paint over the wrinkles. As you paint, you're cloning smooth skin over the wrinkles. You may need to make more than one pass to remove them adequately.

1. Make a duplicate of the background layer by dragging it to the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette.

2. Under the Filter menu, click Sharpen, and choose Unsharp Mask. The Unsharp Mask sounds like it would make things blurry, but it actually sharpens your photo.

3. When the Unsharp Mask dialog appears, enter your settings. If you need help with settings, go to the first technique in the Sharpening chapter or use my favorite all-around sharpening setting.

• Amount: 85 percent

• Radius: 1

• Threshold: 4

4. Click OK to sharpen the entire photo.

5. Apply the Unsharp Mask filter again using the same settings by pressing Ctrl/Command + F.

6. Apply the Unsharp Mask filter again for the third time using the same settings by pressing Ctrl/Command + F. The eyes will probably look nice and crisp at this point, but the rest of the person will be severely over-sharpened and you'll probably see lots of noise and other unpleasant artifacts.

7. Hold the Ctrl/Command key and click once on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to create a new blank layer directly beneath your sharpened layer.

8. In the Layers palette, click back on the top layer (the sharpened layer), then press Ctrl/Command -G to group the sharpened layer with the blank layer beneath it and remove all the visible sharpeness (at least for now).

9. Click the middle layer, the blank layer you grouped with earlier, on the Layers palette. You're going to paint on it.

10. Press D to change the foreground color to black.

11. From the brush picker, choose a soft-edged brush a little smaller than your subject's eye.

12. Paint over the irises and pupils of the eye to reveal the sharpening and make the eyes really sparkle, completing the effect.

1. Open your photo and duplicate the background layer by dragging it to the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette.

2. Click Filter, Blur, and choose Gaussian Blur. Enter between three and six pixels of blur, depending on how soft you want the skin, to put a blur over the entire photo.

3. Lower the opacity to 50 percent to reduce the blurring effect and give the photo a soft glow. Some of you may want to stop here, especially if your subjects are senior citizens, with an overall soft, glamorous effect.

In some cases you'll have too much softening (if you're working with a younger subject, for example). Bring back details in some facial areas by revealing the original features on the layer beneath your blurry layer.

1. Switch to the Eraser tool and choose a soft-edged brush.

2. Erase over facial areas that are supposed to have sharp detail, including eyes, eyebrows, lips, and teeth.

You can complete your retouch at this point, leaving the subject's clothes, hair, background, and so on with the soft glow. Or you can bring sharpness back to detail areas, leaving your subject with a perfect complexion.

1. Switch to a larger soft-edge eraser tool.

2. Erase over everything but skin.