Can anyone please help me with some tips for removing braces

Find a smile from another portrait. Select and copy. Select mouth with braces with 1 pixel feathered lasso. Edit Paste Into and use Free Transform to position. Adjust with Hue/Saturation controls. Clean up details with clone.

Cheers
Duv

Can anyone please help me with some tips for removing braces

A trip to the dentist, perhaps? (sorry, really bad joke, but I couldn't resist :clown: )

Okay, let's get serious. If you have access to a pre-braces pic, Duv's suggestion has a lot of merit. If your luck is like mine, one won't be available.

Hopefully the braces are positioned approx. in the middle of the teeth, so there's uncovered portions of teeth above and below the braces. If that's the case, zoom in close.

For each tooth:
* Click on the Background
* With the Lasso tool, select a portion of "uncovered tooth" (above or below the brace)
* ALT + CTRL + D (invoke the Feather Selection command). About 2 ought to do it. OK
* CTRL + J will create a new layer from the selection
* V to select the Move tool
* Drag the "new piece of tooth" over the brace
* Repeat if necessary with some tooth from below the brace

For each section of "copied tooth," you may have to use a technique called Layer Masking. This will allow you to blend the new sections in a way that it's not noticeable.

It may also be necessary to clone sections as well. You'll need to be the judge of that.

A very good Layer Mask tutorial:
* #1, part 1: http://www.shootsmarter.com/infocenter/sa005.html
* #1, part 2: http://www.shootsmarter.com/infocenter/sa006.html

There's also a good one here at RetouchPRO written by Vikki Hansen. ClickHERE (http://www.retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=63).

Hope this gets you moving.

~Danny~