Eliminate red eye

Red eye occurs when light from an on-camera flash reflects off the back of the eye, giving someone a demonic look. Red eye is such a common problem in color images that Photoshop Elements includes an easy-to-use tool devoted to fixing the problem. Here are my steps:

1. Select the Red Eye Brush tool from the toolbar.
2. Choose a brush from the pop-up palette on the options bar. I chose a Soft Round 65 pixel brush, but the brush you choose will depend on the specifics of your particular image.
3. Click Default Colors on the options bar and specify black as the replacement color.
4. Select First Click from the Sampling pop-up menu and specify a Tolerance of 30 percent.
5. Click on the red area of the eye to specify the color for removal.
6. Drag over the eye until the red is replaced with black. If the replacement black is too light, use the Burn tool to darken the pupil.

If a person's face is pink, sometimes the Red Eye Brush doesn't work as well. To reduce this problem, use the Lasso tool to select the red-eye area and then apply the Red Eye Brush tool.

Use digital fill flash

It's common to take a picture of a person against a bright background. However, if you don't use a fill flash or specifically expose for the skin tones, a face will turn into a silhouette.

Photoshop Elements includes a useful Fill Flash command that does a good job of creating a digital fill flash effect, balancing the foreground with the background.

1. Select Fill Flash from the Enhance menu.
2. Drag the Lighter slider settings until the faces look right and click OK.

It's that easy.

Remove facial blemishes

When I was a teenager, I would have given anything to have control over how my face looked in public. Now kids can doctor their own images. Just use the all-purpose Clone Stamp tool.

Whiten teeth

People spend a lot of money making their teeth look good. After the eyes and the lips, teeth are probably the most noticed part of the face. You can do someone a big favor by removing years of coffee or tobacco stains with a few selective brush strokes. Whatever you do, don't go too far. Teeth that are perfectly white look unnatural. There are two tools you can use.

Here's how you use the Dodge tool to whiten teeth:

1. Select the Dodge tool from the toolbox.
2. In the options bar select Midtones from the Range menu and 50 percent from the Exposure menu.
3. Select an appropriate brush size.
4. Click and drag carefully over the parts of the teeth that you want to whiten. Magnify your image if needed. Dodge incrementally, dragging over a small area and then releasing the mouse button. Stop when you get the look you want. You've gone too far if the teeth look unnatural or if you lose the texture of the teeth.

Here's how you use the Paint Brush to whiten teeth:

1. Choose a color to paint with by selecting the Eyedropper tool from the toolbar.
2. Click the lightest section of a tooth.
3. Now click on the foreground color swatch in the toolbar. This opens the Color Picker.
4. Select a color that is brighter than the sampled color. The sampled color is shown in one circle. The new, lighter selection is shown in a larger circle that is above and to the left of the sampled color.
5. Select the Paintbrush tool from the toolbar.
6. Select an appropriate-size, soft-edge brush from the options bar. Set the Mode to Lighten and Opacity to 15-20 percent.
7. Paint carefully over the teeth until you get the effect you want.