How to Make Someone Look Younger In Photoshop

In this course, you’ll learn How To Make Someone Look Younger in Photoshop. You’ll discover exciting tools and learn many tips for de-aging someone. Let’s get started.

Apply The Smart Portrait Filter (Facial Age Slider)

First, duplicate your layer. Press Ctrl J (Windows) or Command J (macOS) to work non-destructively.

To make someone look younger in Photoshop you can use the new Neural Filters. Go into Filter > Neural Filters. From the Beta Filters, enable the Smart Portrait.

To make your subject look younger, drag the Facial Age slider to the left.

Or you can drag the Facial Age slider to the right to make them look older.

In this example, we will drag the slider all the way to the left to make them look younger.

If the effect looks unnatural, try checking the Retain Unique Details checkbox.

Make sure to Output to a New Layer and press OK.

Fix Neural Filter Imperfections

As impressive as Neural Filters are, they are not perfect. Sometimes you will notice blurring, ghosting, or other imperfections.

In this example, you will notice ghosting on the subject’s nose. To fix this issue, you can use a Layer Mask to hide the imperfections.

With the Duplicate Layer active, create a new Layer Mask.

Select the Brush Tool, and paint on the mask with black to hide the ghosting effect. Or You can paint with white to reveal anything you painted away.

Use Retouching Tools To Remove Wrinkles and Blemishes

Another important step in making someone look younger in Photoshop is to remove wrinkles, blemishes, and other imperfections.

Photoshop has a myriad of tools that you can use to retouch an image. We’ll look at the essential ones you should know.

The Patch Tool

From the Toolbar, select the Patch Tool, and use it to remove blemishes or other imperfections.

To do so, simply click-and-drag around the blemish area you would like to remove. Then drag the selection to another area of similar content that looks good.

Photoshop will then remove the blemish by taking the selected area and blending it with the area with the blemish.

The Spot Healing Brush Tool

Another fantastic retouching tool you could use to make someone look younger in photoshop is the Spot Healing Brush Tool.

First, create a new layer, then activate the Spot Healing Brush Tool from the toolbar.

Then from the Options Bar enable the Sample All Layers checkbox. This will allow you to work non-destructively.

From the Blending Mode dropdown, select the Blend Mode better suited for the task at hand. You will most likely use Normal, Darken or Lighten.

If the blemish you are trying to remove is darker than the skin tone use Lighten. If it’s brighter than the skin tone use Darken.

Then simply paint over the wrinkle or blemish to remove it.

Skin Smoothing To Make Someone Look Younger in Photoshop

Now that we have no wrinkles and no blemishes in our image, we can apply a global skin smoothing effect to make the model look even younger.

Select the topmost layer, and press Ctrl Alt Shift E (Windows) or Command Option Shift E (macOS), to copy the contents of all the layers and paste them into a new layer.

Then go to Filters > Neural Filters. From the Featured Filters, select the Skin Smoothing filter.

Move the Blur slider all the way to the left, set the Output to Current Layer and press OK.

As you can tell, the smoothing effect is too strong and it looks very unnatural. To reduce the smoothing effect, create a black Layer Mask to hide all the contents of the layer.

To do so, hold Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) and click on the new Layer Mask icon. Then use the Brush Tool to paint with white to reveal the blur effect over the required areas.

Use the Liquify Filter To Make The Head Look Younger

To make someone look younger in Photoshop, you also need to adjust the shape of the face. We will use the Liquify filter for this.

Start by clicking on the topmost layer, hold Shift and click on the first layer to select them all.

Then, right-click and select Convert to Smart Object. Now you can treat this image as one, and apply any adjustment you like nondestructively.

Go to Filter > Liquify

From the Liquify Toolbar, enable the Face Tool. Photoshop will then display overlays over the face and you can use these controls to make structural changes to the face.

You can move the nose up, make the eyes wider, and make the face thinner.

With Forward Warp Tool you can push and pull areas of the face to make it look younger.

For example, you can lower the hairline and move the chin upwards a bit.

Final Thoughts

Now you’ve learned to make someone look younger in Photoshop, try it out with your projects and submit your work on our Instagram.

Please use the hashtag #PTCVIDS. We’d love to see what you’ve come up with!

Tutorial Assets

To follow along with this tutorial, you can download this image.

Final Image

Drag The Slider To See Before & After