Welcome to Part 6 of QwikLearn Photoshop Elements, where we'll talk about how to fix and enhance your photos. Let's start with the photo feature that sure to put a smile on your face. Smile for the camera! Have you ever heard those words or said them yourself? It isn't always easy to catch a smile on someone's face. Next time you have a ho-hum facial expression, you can do something about it in Photoshop Elements.

I'll demonstrate using this photo, which you'll find in the Part 6, lesson one practice folder. Before making facial adjustments, let's duplicate the background layer by using the shortcut, Ctrl J in Windows or Command J on a Mac. If you can't remember that shortcut, you can always right click on the layer and choose Duplicate Layer from the context menu or in the Menu Bar you can choose Layer, Duplicate Layer, but Ctrl or Command J is so fast and easy that is worth memorizing. Think of jJ for jumping to a new layer. Now let's see if we can make this little girl smile.

In the menu bar choose enhance. Adjust Facial Features. You'll see your photo with a circle around the face. Press Ctrl + in Windows or Command + on a Mac until your photo is close enough that you can see the face well. In the Adjustment panel on the right, click on the part of the face you want to adjust to open up options for that facial feature, Lips, Eyes, Nose or Face. I want to adjust the lips. Move the Smile slider to the left to turn the lip corners down and move the slider to the right to turn the lip corners up.

Now be careful not to go too far. You want a realistic smile. In some cases like this one, the most you'll get is a pleasant look. But that's still an improvement. Move the Width slider to make the smile wider, but again, don't go too far. I'll just move this a little bit to the right, click on the icon, and move the size slider to the right slightly to enlarge the eyes a wee bit. I could try out some other possibilities but I'm satisfied with the look here. It's best to be conservative in what you use unless you're intentionally trying to distort an image just for fun.

Click on the before and after toggle switch to compare and you can see what a difference it makes. You can also click on the Reset button if you want to start over. When you're satisfied. Click OK to apply the changes.

Click on the Visibility icon of the duplicate layer to see the before and after look again. You can either save this image as a layered PSD with both layers, or you can save it as a single layer JPG copy with a new name.

So that's how to use Enhance Facial Features to give a ho-hum face a much more pleasant look.