Removing or Lessening Wrinkles with Photoshop Elements
Video Tutorial

Open the photo you want to remove wrinkles from. The photo I am using is shown below of Jack Nicholson:

Duplicate the photo (File > Duplicate) just in case you need to start over.

Duplicate the Background layer by going to the Layer menu, under New, and choosing Layer via Copy (or press Control-J). You’ll perform your “wrinkle removal” on this duplicate layer, named “Layer 1” in the Layers palette.

Your layer palette should look like my layers palette shown below:

Get the Healing Brush tool from the Toolbox (or press the J key).

Then, choose a soft-edged brush from the Brush Picker (which opens when you click the Brush Preset icon in the Options Bar). Choose a brush size that’s close to the size of the wrinkles you want to remove.

Find a clean area that’s somewhere near the wrinkles (perhaps the upper cheek if you’re removing crow’s-feet, or if you’re removing forehead wrinkles, perhaps just above or below the wrinkle). Hold the Alt key and click once to sample the texture of the skin from that area. Now, take the Healing Brush tool and paint over the wrinkles. As you paint, the wrinkles will disappear, yet the texture and detail of the skin remains intact.

Now to make the photo look realistic, you could simply go to the Layers palette and reduce the Opacity of this layer to bring back some of the original wrinkles.

This lets a small amount of the original photo (the Background layer, with all its wrinkles still intact) show through. Keep lowering the Opacity until you see the wrinkles, but not nearly as prominent as before.

Before	After