A Smile-Saving Tip For Your Photos (Photoshop Elements)

Remember those makeover shows where the lucky recipient was treated to what seemed like a complete overhaul of their looks? Sometimes the results were fabulous… and sometimes they seemed… well, a little “overdone.” One of the usual improvements was an expensive teeth-whitening treatment that involved some gooey gel and laser lights.

Well, if you’re working with a photo of someone with less-than-pearly-white teeth, there’s a much faster, and less complicated technique for brightening that smile.

Usually, all that’s required is a very slight adjustment to achieve the results you want. And even though there are several methods for whitening teeth in Elements, including the Whiten Teeth Smart Brush, I like this one best because it gives you more accurate, and more natural looking results.

Step 1: Assess your image

• Open the image you want to work with in Elements, and press Ctrl J (Mac: Cmd J) to duplicate it.
• Take a look at the whites of the subject’s eyes. When correcting dull teeth, you want to maintain a very natural look. So, generally speaking, the corrected teeth should never be whiter or brighter than the whites of the eyes.

Step 2: Precise selection

• On the duplicated layer, zoom in close, and select just the teeth using the selection tool of your choice. I used the Quick Selection Tool – but you may prefer to use another one, depending upon the complexity of outlining the teeth.
• Take your time to make an exact selection, and be sure not to get any portions of the gums or lips.
• Right click (Mac: Ctrl click) on your photo to get a pop up menu, and choose Feather. When the dialog box comes up, set the feather radius to 1 pixel. Click Okay.

Step 3: Credible correction

• Press Ctrl U (Mac: Cmd U) to open the Hue/Saturation dialogue box. Then move the Saturation slider slightly to the left, until you see the yellow beginning to fade. For this image, I set the slider to –18. You may see a very slight grayish tint, but that’s okay, we’re about to fix that.
• Move the Lightness slider very slightly to the right. This will brighten up the teeth. Be very careful with this step. You might be tempted to “over-brighten” to make the teeth gleaming white. But you’ll end up with teeth that are unnaturally white… so bright that they look fake, and will steal focus from the rest of the face. Keep it subtle, and you’ll keep it real. For this image, I set the Lightness slider to +10. Click Okay.
• Click Ctrl D (Mac: Cmd D) to deselect the teeth.

• Take a look at your results, and click on the Eye icon next to your corrected image layer to turn it off and on, as you compare it with your original image.
• Like what you see? Save it as a JPG and rename it, keeping the original image intact.

Now wasn’t that easy? Give it a try on one of your photos, and be sure to share the results with us! Post your before and after shots in the Tip of the Week Gallery at www.scrappersguide.com/forums.

Download a PDF version of this “Smile-Saving Tip For Your Photos” tutorial.

Windows: Right click on the link and choose “Save Target As” or a similar command.
Mac: Click on the link to download the file.

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