He Says The Teeth Are Blue

[austinosphere]

My client says the teeth are blue, this after looking at the prints.

What do you think? Are they too blue?

I'm the office guy, not an experienced retoucher, I googled how to do the teeth and it talks about adding in blue to counter act the yellow - but I don't see it, and I dont' know enough about levels to see what they indicate.

Any feedback?

[toxic_snake]

Yes, they are a little blue-ish.

What you should do is to play with the saturation of the teeth, along with the brightness.

[ray12]

Blue is the opposite color... on the color wheel... from yellow. So if the subject has coffee stained or other yellowing...then yes it is common to add blue back in... to offset the yellow.

Retouching teeth does involve the balance of color, brightness and saturation...its important to look at the color balance of the whole image and be sure your retouching does not draw undue attention to the teeth area...just make them look nice and in balance with the rest of the image.

Sometimes I might be tempted to make them too bright...then they become a distraction of themselves because the eye is easily drawn to the brightest part of the image.

There is something special that happens when you look at Prints...the color of the inks and paper changes... based on whether you are looking at it in sunlight (blue light), incandescent light (yellowish light) or office fluorescent light (some times greenish or purplish). So yes, your monitor could show you one color that looks great, and then your print could show you another color depending on the light color cast that you are viewing it in. Also, sometimes printer color management can produce an overall color cast in a paper print that is different than your monitor... especially if your color monitor has not been "Calibrated"...then the color on your screen WILL NOT be the color in the prints.

Your images here are not TOO FAR off...at least on my calibrated screen. Your first image may be just a bit bright...and the second one has an overall magenta color cast and the teeth actually look just a bit yellow. Who knows how they actually look printed in a print...thats going to be different than what you show here most likely. What if the print was printed on bleached paper stock...then yes, they are going to look one way here on our monitors...and then very blue to your boss. (ink and paper blueness added to the equation we see here)

Have him look at your prints in Tungsten Incandescent Light Bulb Kind of Light (rather than blue daylight)...that will "yellow up" the look on your blueish print a bit and make it look OK possibly. LOL. A lot of this is judgement, preference, the color of the light your viewing it in, and the inaccuracy of the printing process itself. In the commercial world we have calibrated lights to view prints in..so we and the client are seeing the image "in the same light".

The client is the best judge of who should end up being right...so go ahead and drop the opacity on your blueish correction for him... and yellow them up just a very tiny bit. Balance is the key. The way people do real teeth brightening today with dental products is highly artificial and overly blue/bright...some peoples teeth are almost blinding!!

Cheers, Good Luck. And... Make the client smile!!

[crazyfly1]

Your client is colorblind or doesn't want to pay, or both. You can see both visually by the swatch on the left from the color sample (5x5) and by the numbers in the info pallet that the teeth are not even in the ball park with blue. If anything they are still a little yellow.
Of course, you'll still have to make them less blue cuz of that whole custormer is always right crap.
One thought, what is the light like in the office or studio where you showed the pix? Is the lighting to blue?

[Dave.Cox]

I agree, on my monitor they do not appear to be too blue, and my monitor is correctly calibrated. But if your client thinks that they are too blue, try making them a tad more yellow.

[morrow]

I find that the blue is too faint to even be considered. Tell your client to stop being so picky.

[Cuervo79]

Maybe your client has an un-calibrated monitor? The colors seem ok in the first one in the second one I can see the teeth with a little red hue to them.

[Markzebra]

Most likely cause? your client has run a print off on a dodgy laser copier and is stupid enough to be making judgements on that. Its little to do with the RGB values of the images themselves, maybe the first image maybe the teeth are slightly too blue but only by a few points - second one is fine.

More likely a printing issue, because you cay the client is making judgement using a print. How was the CMYK conversion done? Who was the printer? Is your client looking at his prints under correct neutral light?

[everyxnewxday]

I've found that I get the most realistic teeth whitening by using hue/saturation to desaturate some, lighten a little bit, and, most importantly, shift the hue towards RED a little. If you simply desaturate the teeth, they will look blue, even though they are neutral or still a little warm. Think about it, even if someone had perfectly white teeth in real life they would look a little pinkish because they are reflecting the color of the person's lips.

[crazyfly1]

OK I have the answer for you. In the first image you can clearly see from an average of the eye teeth that they are not blue, they are not leaning towards blue, they don't have a bit of a blue tint. Sooo, pull out your pantone color book and, beat the customer about the head and sholders with it until he cries yellow.
Or show the customer the second image and when they get all indignant and start complaining that if the origional was too blue then this one is certainly too blue, well, then you know what the problem is and you just make every thing greyscale for him from now on.

[lucija]

the teeth look just fine :-)

[SilvaFox]

Originally Posted by morrow

I find that the blue is too faint to even be considered. Tell your client to stop being so picky.

Funny.

BTW, if the client says they're too blue, they're too blue. (I don't see it, but I'm not paying you.)

[W.Smith]

Teeth are ivory. So they are supposed to be ivory-colored. Not white! (Nor of course blue[ish] or yellow[ish]). Therefore really white teeth are a dead give away of artificial coloring. I.e. unnatural.

[keiserjohn]

My eizo says they are not blue!

[ricric]

Show him a blue teeth and your edited picture. Hopefully he get it.

[andyong]

looks white in my monitor..