Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Whitening Teeth

If you’ve ever enjoyed a Texas-sized goblet of red wine and then had your picture taken, you’ll want to bookmark this page. Stained teeth are even more embarrassing than shiny spots, but fortunately they’re easier to fix (see Figure 10-11). You could start by selecting the teeth—the Quick Selection tool works well—and then feather the selection, though it’s much easier to apply the lightening to the whole image, hide it with a layer mask, and then reveal the lightening atop the teeth using the Brush tool.

Figure 10-11. You can easily whiten teeth with a hue/saturation adjustment layer, as shown here. That way, you don’t harm the original image because the fixing happens on its own layer, plus you can lower the adjustment layer’s opacity to keep the teeth from looking too white. Because the teeth are so small, it’s easiest to lighten the whole photo and then reveal the lightening only on the teeth using the included layer mask. You can use the same technique to whiten eyes, too, but you don’t have to reduce the adjustment layer’s saturation; just increasing the lightness should do the trick. Page 466 explains another way to accentuate eyes, which also works on teeth. (You can’t say Photoshop doesn’t give you enough options!)

Here’s how to make those pearly whites, well, white:

1. Open an image and zoom in so you can see the subject’s teeth.

   Press ⌘-+ (Ctrl-+ on a PC) to zoom ...