Whiten Teeth in PS - No Masks, No Brushes

[mistermonday]

I do a ton of people photographing and one of the most common touch-ups required is whitening teeth. Most of the time all you want to do is get rid of the yellow color but leave the teeth in their natural state maintaing their form and lighting highlights. The following is one of the fastest and most reliable methods I have found.

1. Using the freeform Lasso Tool in Photoshop, make a rough selection around the mouth. Try to keep the selection constrained to the pink lips or the pink gums but avoid getting it on the surrounding skin.

2. Image>Adjust>Selective Color (the shortcut is Alt+I+A+S)

3. When the dialog box comes up, select the yellow channel from the pull down menu and drag the yellow slider all the way to the left and click OK.

Usually you are now done. Occasionally if you have teeth which are very yellow, you may need to do this a 2nd or 3rd time. However, yoyr selection is still active and it will take you about 3 seconds to type Alt+I+A+S.

You will maintain all of the detail and lighting in the teeth.

I hope you find this tip useful.
Regards,
Murray

[Ed_L]

Another good one! Thank you.

Ed

[Flora]

Great Tip!!!

Thanks for sharing Murray!!

[mrblake50]

Murray, I just tried your tip; can't believe how easy and fast it was! It did the job, just as you said it would. Thank you!!

[Ant]

your teeth are blue

[maureeno]

Another way, and I find it easier, is to Lasso at 3 pixels feather and trace the teeth round--careful to get just the teeth, and go the Hue /Sat adjustment layer. Lower the Saturation to around -31, then add lightness to about 15. Adjust the lightness as it needs it. Some requires more, some less.

That's all.

Maureen

[fpellerin]

That's a nice/quick way to do it. Thanks for the tip!

[vidanse]

I do it the same way as Maureeno. I always use adustment layers and while I'm there I do the whites of the eyes at the same time but lower the opacity of my brush. I do tons of high school seniors.

ciao Vicki

[mistermonday]

Ant, at the time wwhen I uploaded that image I was working on a bad LCD display, so I overdid the correction and didn't notice it until I switch back to my main workstation w/ a real monitor. The technique produces excellent results very quickly most of the time. Also the sample image I used is way way more yellow than you would see in 95% of the photos you retouch.
Regards, Murray

[Jon Foster]

Thanks for the tip. I've always gone around the edges of the teeth to make the selection. I'll try your method and see what kind of results I get.

Thanks again, Jon.