In any portrait, the eyes are the most important element, drawing the viewer in and revealing much about the subject's mood and personality. Try enhancing your digital photos by using the following tricks to boost eye color, brightness, and sparkle.

Always do this kind of retouching work on a duplicate layer. In Photoshop Elements, you can copy the eyes to a new layer by selecting the eye area and then pressing Ctrl + J (Cmd + J on a Mac).

• Boost the saturation of the iris: In Elements, use the Sponge tool for this step. Choose a very small, soft brush, set the Mode control on the Options bar to Saturate, and click all the way around the iris. Don't overdo — you don't want the eye color to look unnatural.
• Brighten the whites of the eyes: Dab at the whites of the eyes with the Dodge tool. Which Range setting you use depends on the original eye, so you need to do some experimenting here. Again, don't go too far. You just want to make the whites slightly lighter, not glow-in-the-dark bright.
• Sharpen the eyeball: To make the eyes sparkle, pick up the Sharpen tool. Choose a soft brush that's slightly larger than the size of the eyeball. Then click once or twice to sharpen just that area.

If your photo editor doesn't offer a Saturation, Dodge, or Sharpen tool, you can select the portion of the eye that you want to alter and then use the program's standard saturation, exposure, and sharpening filters to make these changes.