Make Everyone Look Their Best: Portrait Touch-Ups in Photoshop Elements

# Make Everyone Look Their Best: Portrait Touch-Ups in Photoshop Elements

Every family has those photos — the ones where the moment was perfect but someone\'s eyes are slightly red, the lighting washed out a few smiles, or tired skin made your favourite uncle look older than he is. The photo is worth keeping. It just needs a little kindness.

Photoshop Elements has a set of portrait tools built specifically for these situations. None of them require any design skills. Most take under a minute. And when you are done, the photo still looks like your family — just the best version of them.

Before you start

Open the photo in Expert Mode. This gives you access to all the retouching tools in one place.

If the portrait is a JPEG straight from your phone or camera, work on a copy first. Go to File > Duplicate, work on the duplicate, and keep the original untouched. That way you always have something to go back to.

Fixing red-eye in seconds

Red-eye happens when a camera flash bounces off the blood vessels at the back of the eye. It is one of the most common problems in indoor portraits and one of the fastest fixes in Photoshop Elements.

1. 1Select the Red Eye Removal tool from the toolbar on the left — it looks like an eye with a small cross next to it.
2. 2Draw a small rectangle around one eye.
3. 3Photoshop Elements replaces the red with a natural dark grey automatically.
4. 4Repeat for the other eye.

If the fix looks slightly unnatural, try adjusting the Darken Amount slider in the options bar at the top. A setting around 50% usually looks most natural.

Pet eyes

The same tool handles the orange or green glow you sometimes see in pet photos. Switch the tool from Red Eye to Pet Eye in the options bar before you start.

Brightening eyes

Even without red-eye, eyes in photos can look flat and dull compared to how they look in real life. A subtle brightness boost makes a portrait feel more alive.

1. 1Select the Dodge tool — it looks like a small lollipop shape in the toolbar.
2. 2In the options bar at the top, set Range to Highlights and Exposure to around 10–15%.
3. 3Choose a soft brush slightly smaller than the iris.
4. 4Paint gently over the white of the eye and the iris with one or two light strokes.

Less is more here. Overdoing it creates an unnaturally bright, glassy look. A single light pass is usually all you need.

Whitening teeth

Slightly yellow or grey teeth are extremely common in photos, especially indoors under warm lighting. Photoshop Elements has a Smart Brush preset that handles this in just a few clicks.

1. 1Select the Smart Brush tool from the toolbar.
2. 2In the panel that opens, scroll through the presets and find the Portrait category.
3. 3Select the Very Pearly Whites preset.
4. 4Paint over the teeth in the photo.

The Smart Brush applies the brightening only to the tones it detects as teeth — so it will not accidentally bleach the lips or gums. If the selection strays into an area it should not, click the Subtract from Selection option in the tool options bar and paint over the area you want to remove.

Keep the effect subtle. Real teeth are not bright white — they are off-white with a slight warmth. A gentle application looks far more convincing than an aggressive one.

Smoothing skin

Harsh indoor lighting or a front-facing camera flash can make skin texture look rougher than it really is. Photoshop Elements has a dedicated guided edit called Perfect Portrait that softens skin in a few clicks.

1. 1Click the Guided tab at the top of the screen to switch to Guided mode.
2. 2Click Special Edits, then select Perfect Portrait.
3. 3Click the Smooth Skin button.
4. 4Paint over the skin areas you want to soften — cheeks, forehead, chin.
5. 5Move the Strength slider to control how much smoothing is applied. Start around 30–40% and stop before it looks artificial.
6. 6Click Done when you are happy with the result.

Avoid painting over the eyes, lips, and hairline — those areas need to stay sharp to keep the portrait looking natural. When you are finished, click Expert at the top to return to Advanced mode and continue editing.

Keeping it real

The goal of portrait touch-ups is not to change how people look — it is to remove the small accidents of photography that do not represent them fairly. Red-eye is a camera problem, not a people problem. Dull eyes in a photo do not reflect how bright and engaged that person actually was in the moment.

When you show someone a portrait you have retouched, the response you are aiming for is not "wow, what did you do to it?" It is simply "that is a lovely photo of you."

That is the whole point.