Here is a quick glamour tip for Photoshop CS4 to add some "Wow!" to eyes and lips. It involves a Vibrance adjustment layer, the Masks panel, and the Brush tool. This is a quick retouch that gives you a lot of control.

(It is possible to use the Photoshop CS4 Sponge tool set to Vibrance and Saturate. You get less control. In my experience, it's easy to end up with too strong an effect. Lips can end up looking like too much lipstick was applied, etc.)

You can quickly refine a mask with the Photoshop CS4 Masks panel. This can be very helpful for adjusting the effect of sharpening with an edge mask or noise reduction with a surface mask.

I read an occasional comment in forums like Photography-on-the.net, DPReview.com, or RetouchPro where someone says they like the TLR sharpening tools but sometimes the effect is too strong or not strong enough.

Photoshop users sometimes assume that the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) sliders for Exposure and Brightness do pretty much the same thing. After all, they both lighten or darken the photograph.

This is a quick and easy technique for giving photographs some extra "pop." You can use this with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. It will also work with other photo editors, like GIMP, that support layers and an Overlay-type blending mode.

This technique adds "pop" by increasing contrast. It's more pronounced than using something like the Clarity slider in Adobe Camera Raw or the TLR Clarity Enhancement effect, but it's a "softer" contrast adjustment than just whacking contrast around with something like a Curves "S" curve. 

A quick and easy way to convert an image from color to B&W is to use the Channel Mixer dialog. You can blend information from the individual RGB channels into a B&W image.

When you work with masks or brush in editing, to do the job well, you need to make changes to brush size, opacity, hardness, and fill while you work.

If you want to make changes while you brush without leaving your place to adjust settings on the Options Bar, you can instead use these helpful keyboard shortcuts.

High contrast situations be extremely challenging for the landscape photographer. Expose for the highlights or the sky and you can lose shadow details. Expose for the shadow details and you can burn out highlights or wash out the sky.

Photoshop CS3 added a live overlay of the cloning area. The implementation was a little awkward. Photoshop CS4 makes it a lot easier to see a live preview with the Clone. The same is true for the Healing Brush tool, also.

Ever wanted to add your signature as an artist to the corner of a photograph? Well, it's easy to create a Brush Preset in Photoshop for your signature using whatever font you prefer. You can even embellish your signature with some line art, if you like.

(This same technique will work for adding a copyright, a watermark, etc.)