My initial moves always are with the healing brush. I try to attack everything I see. By definition, if I notice it, it shouldn't be there. So it's only natural that I would deal with deep wrinkles around the eyes and in the face at this point. The healing brush makes quick work of them

Here's a fairly normal pair of eyes (A); however if they were meant for a cover of, say, Elle, the instruction would be "Knock back the wrinkles some." Which means keep it real. Don't do an eye-lift that stretches the skin tight and glossy.

Now, retouching just part of the way is kind of a pain; the usual approach is to set your cloning or healing tool at a low opacity and clone some clean skin over the wrinkle. This is never particularly satisfying; there's almost always a softness and loss of detail surrounding the actual wrinkle.

What is easy, using the healing brush, is to hit the offending wrinkles head on and obliterate them altogether (B). Then cut out the originals from the layer beneath, and put them on top (C). Now you just need to set the opacity to determine how much you will knock them back. This is how they look at 40% (D). There is still some discoloration and unevenness, but it was already there. We'll deal with that in later fine tuning steps. But for deep face, neck and eye wrinkles, this will allow you to keep believability, while repairing the damage.

My initial moves always are with the healing brush. I try to attack everything I see. By definition, if I notice it, it shouldn't be there. So it's only natural that I would deal with deep wrinkles around the eyes and in the face at this point. The healing brush makes quick work of them

Here's a fairly normal pair of eyes (A); however if they were meant for a cover of, say, Elle, the instruction would be "Knock back the wrinkles some." Which means keep it real. Don't do an eye-lift that stretches the skin tight and glossy.

Now, retouching just part of the way is kind of a pain; the usual approach is to set your cloning or healing tool at a low opacity and clone some clean skin over the wrinkle. This is never particularly satisfying; there's almost always a softness and loss of detail surrounding the actual wrinkle.

What is easy, using the healing brush, is to hit the offending wrinkles head on and obliterate them altogether (B). Then cut out the originals from the layer beneath, and put them on top (C). Now you just need to set the opacity to determine how much you will knock them back. This is how they look at 40% (D). There is still some discoloration and unevenness, but it was already there. We'll deal with that in later fine tuning steps. But for deep face, neck and eye wrinkles, this will allow you to keep believability, while repairing the damage.