Section 97. Whiten Teeth

97. Whiten Teeth

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

80 Zoom In and Out with the Zoom Tool

81 Zoom In and Out with the Overview Palette

SEE ALSO

96 Remove Freckles and Minor Blemishes

98 Awaken Tired Eyes

There are many products on the market that you can use to whiten your teeth: gels, toothpastes, whitening strips , and bleaches, but none work as fast and as effectively as digital editing. It's not vanity to want to improve mother nature; in our culture today, a great importance is placed on having clean, white teeth, and if a photo will be used in a resum ƒ or to advertise a product, you'll want to give the best impression you can by making sure that your subject looks his or her best.

Whitening teeth is tricky, however; you don't want the effect to look obvious and artificial. You'll want to avoid the temptation to use pure white to paint over all your teeth, which results in a picket-fence effect that can look genuinely scary. The technique explained here uses the Dodge tool, which selectively lightens the brightness of the pixels over which it passes . You must be cautious, however, so that you don't burn out the color and create a fake whiteness.

TIP

I always get good results with the Dodge tool, but if you don't like its effects, try selecting the teeth, choosing Adjust, Color Balance, Red/Green/Blue , and increasing the Blue value.

97. Whiten Teeth

1.	Select the Dodge Tool Zoom in on the teeth so that you can see them clearly, and then select the Dodge tool on the Tools toolbar. TIP To isolate the effects of the Dodge tool, select the teeth before beginning. You might want to select the gums as well.
2.	Set Options Adjust the Size of the Dodge tool in the Tool Options palette so that the brush tip is just larger than the teeth. Set Opacity to 10 or so, Density to 100, and Hardness to 50. If you want to prevent over-lightening the teeth and burning them out, select the Continuous option. This option prevents the brush from lightening pixels more, even if you pass over them more than once.
3.	Whiten the Teeth If the Continuous option is not turned on, position the brush tip over the first tooth and click once. The tooth should get just a bit lighter. Click again to lighten a bit more, or move to the next tooth. Repeat until all the teeth are whiter. If the Continuous option is set, drag over the teeth to lightenthey will only be lightened up to the Opacity amount you select, even if you brush over them several times. TIP Remove any remaining imperfections (such as uneven color or spots on the teeth) with the Clone Brush .
4.	View the Result Compare the original (on the left) to the whitened version; you can see that the teeth on the right look better, and yet still natural. Look for this image in the Color Gallery section.