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Whitening teeth
How do I whiten teeth without making portraits look faked?
I perpetually have a problem with taking photos of people that their teeth look very yellowed when all other colors look natural. I don’t believe it’s an exposure issue because THEY REALLY HAVE YELLOW TEETH, but socially we all ignore it. In photos, it’s hard to overlook it and it’s the subjects’ first commentary. I’d hate taking pictures that show people’s flaws. I’m able to use smudge, healing, and blur tools to eliminate complexion issues, but teeth… Oh my gosh.
I’ve tried some color substitution but that looks horribly fake.
Help!
P.S. Good news is… as a result, my own dental hygiene has improved dramatically.
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3 Replies
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Never mind. I did a google search and found how to properly use the dodge tool.
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I run across this as well and I do a combination of a small amount of desaturate along with a slight amount of brightness. I usually select the teeth and drop them on a new layer, then, if needed, screen back the opacity to blend it for a more real appearance.
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[john murphy] “Never mind. I did a google search and found how to properly use the dodge tool.”
I would NOT recommend the Dodge tool for this purpose! Dodge will change not only the color of the teeth but also the brightness. A better solution would be to create a new layer above the image, set it’s blend mode to ‘Color’ and then paint over the teeth with a pure white brush.
This may make the teeth too unbelievably white, so you could reduce the effect by selectively masking the Color layer or reducing its Fill.
If you also would like to brighten the teeth then I would recommend using an adjustment layer to do this as opposed to the Dodge tool.
Darby Edelen
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