Expensive creams and potions from cosmetics companies pledge to remove years from your face, but rarely fully deliver upon their promises. Photoshop, however, comes with several tools that really can make you appear MUCH younger... and they are free to reuse over and over again! This tutorial details a technique for simple wrinkle removal using the Healing Brush Tool present in versions of Photoshop 7.0 and greater. No special skills are required - only a keen eye, a little free time, and a decent quality photograph.

Step 1:  Open up a stock image in Photoshop of any size and/or format. The best results for this tutorial usually involve large images with good color ranges and universal light distribution. Sudden shadows and tonal changes will make your work much harder, but not impossible. With the background layer selected in the layers palette, choose Layer > Duplicate Layer from the main menu. Select the copied background layer in the layers palette to make it active.

Step 2: Take the Healing Brush Tool and duplicate the settings on the right. Please remember that you may need to tweak your settings manually to adapt to the resoluion of your source image.

Step 3: Now press and hold ALT on your keyboard whilst at the same time clicking on a smooth area of skin near a wrinkle that you want to remove. Essentially what we are doing here is sampling a smooth area so Photoshop can clone it over the wrinkles.

Step 4: Release ALT and start to click and drag on the nearest wrinkles. The cross shows where the sample is taken from, and the other cursor where its being pasted. Apply the Healing Brush Tool in small strokes. If you need to undo any changes you can simply step backward by pressing ALT+CTRL+Z on your keyboard, or by going backwards using the History Palette.

Step 5: See the difference? Now do the same thing with the nearest wrinkles before progressing into the other cheek and lower down around the mouth.

Step 6: And there we go! Its a completely different face isn't it? We've removed at least 30 years from this lucky lady! And that's all there is to it! See, I told you it would be simple! In combination with several other techniques you can rapidly convert anybody into a beauty model. You won't trust cosmetic adverts ever again! NB. To compare before & after images, just place your mouse over the image to the left.

- Tutorial written by BCool
- Translation by Man1c M0g

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