1. Whitening the eyes and teeth using Dodge tool (Highlights at an exposure of 20 %) after the red-eyes are removed.
2. Level Adjustment Layer(Layers-> New Adjustment Layer) - highlight on something if it’s too close the dark background. Using white to highlight the object, black (grey) to not to highlight.
3. Smart Blur filter for smooth out the skin but it also smooth out the hair. Apply Sharpen filter to fix the hair back.
4. Liquify command (Filter, Distort, Pucker) to make things smaller.
5. Hue/Saturation (Ctrl-U) to balance out the color shift that was caused by the flash. (by tweaking the hue)
6. Use Burn tool to create shading.

Removing colors from the images:  

Photoshop-
1. Desaturate
2. History brush to paint the color back.

Elements-
1. when the photo is opened, create a new Adjustment layer - Hue/ Saturation. Move the Saturation slider to the extreme left.
2. Brush tool (B) and the color set to black. Paint the object which you want it to be colored.
3. Use Brush tools with color set to white to remove the color again.

Replacing an Overcast Sky

1. Magic Wand tool (W) and set the Tolerance setting to 70. Uncheck the Contiguous box in the Options bar. click on the sky.
2. Deselection - Choose Rectangle Marquee tool. Choose the Subtract From Selection button in the Options bar. Click and drag a marquee over the area that we don’t want to change. Selection Brush tool (which produces a red overlay when Mask Mode is selected in the Options bar) to show the finished selection (Use Ctrl - H to turn this function off if you want.).
3. Copy the cloud image.
4. Edit–> Paste Into (Shift-Ctrl-V)
5. Move Tool (V). Once you find the right position for the cloud, remove the selection (Ctrl-D)

 

Add stroke to texts - Use Edit-> Stroke with 2px for width and location to center.  

Use smaller image and the effects will be relatively large.
Painterly effects work better when image has high contrast and vivid colors.

Using Filters to cover up poor photos
1. An obscene amount of Unsharp Masking applied with 200 percent at a 4-pixel radius. Then an equally obscene amount of Contrast (+40) is applied.
2. Rough Pastels filter (Filter, Artistic, Rough Pastels)
3. (Optional) Hue/Saturation control (Ctrl-U), check the Colorize check box to create a sepiatone print.

Using Filters to cover up worse photos
1. Use Watercolor filter and then the Poster Edges filter

Using multiple Filters to enhance a painterly effect without losing quality
1. Paint Dubs filter( Filter, Artistic)
2. Duplicated background into a layer and apply Rough Pastels (Filer Artistic) to the layer on the top.
3. In the Layers palette, change the Blend mode to Overlay.
4. Wrap it up with frame.

Adjustment Layer Won’t damage the original images.

1. Click the layer 0
2. Click the “Crate a New Layer”
3. Ctrl-click layer 0 to load the image selection
4. Press D to make foreground color black
5. “Select menu” -> Modify, Expand –>20 pixels
6. With new layer still the active layer, press Alt-Delete to fill selection with black.
7. Ctrl-click Layer 0 again to load the selection
8. “Select menu” -> Modify, Contract –>10 pixels
9. With new layer still the active layer, press Delete key and then Ctrl-D to deselect.
10. Add rough edge to the frame. with new layer is active, “Filter menu”-> Brush Strokes, Spatter. type 16 for Spray Radius and 9 for Smoothness.
11. Fix fringing by using Magic Wand tool and click inside the black-frame area. load only the black areas. “Select menu” -> Modify, Contract –>3 pixels. Ctrl-Shift-I to invert. Delete key to remove the fringe. Ctrl-D to deselect.

D - make the default colors black and white
Alt+double click on the layers - regular background layer becomes ordinary layer.  

Crop- 1. select the wanted part.
2. Ctrl-Shift-I to invert
3. press the Delete(backspace) key
4. Ctrl-D to deselect.
V - move tool (could use the arrow keys to move the layer)

During the text insert - 1. Hold Ctrl key to toggle the Move Tool.
2. Ctrl-Enter to commit the text.