Here's a Photoshop Tutorial to drastically enhance the overall look of any portrait, simply by applying a few effects to the eyes.
First off, open your image in Photoshop. This tutorial uses Photoshop CS2, but it works equally well with Photoshop 7, Photoshop CS, or Photoshop CS3.
I will be using this image:
Step 1: Cleaning up the Whites
The first step is to use Photoshop to clean up the white parts a bit. You can use Photoshop's Healing Brush tool, but I find it more effective to just get rid of the problem altogether. To do this, first duplicate the background layer. With the duplicate background layer selected, go to Photoshop->Image->Apply Image on the Photoshop menu. On the dialog box that appears, set the channel to "Red" and the blending mode to "normal." Then click ok.
Once Photoshop has made the adjustments, add a layer mask to the duplicated background layer. (Click the button on the bottom of the layers pallete that looks like a white circle on a dark rectangle.)
With the layer mask selected, press control+i to inver the layer mask. Now switch to the Brush Tool on the Photoshop tool bar and make white your foreground color. Simply paint over the whites of the eyes and watch Photoshop make the bad bits disappear. If you make a mistake, simply change your foreground color to black and paint over the mistake to undo it. Continue painting until the whole white area is clean.
We don't want the effect to look fakey or plasticy, so you need to lower the layer's opacity a bit. To do this, simply change the opacity on the top of the Photoshop Layers pallete to something closer to 55 percent.
The portrait is improving already. Click here to go to part two of this Photoshop Tutorial.