Oh Lord, the teeth...

j photog

So I'm not a photoshop pro...as of late.
I use 7.0...yep. Elements, people.
I'm not all upgraded and all that jazz.
I am pretty good at getting a nice complexion on a person who doesn't have such. But I am really bad at teeth! I've shot some pretty yeller ones these last few days. What is the best way to do this naturally? And bear with me. As I stated, I'm not a super pro at the photoshop tricks.
Anything you can suggest will help.

Thanks.

imann08

I'll give you a few general guidelines for teeth. Don't know whether or not it will help but here it goes. First, teeth shouldn't be totally white. They should always be off white at best. Second, if the teeth in your image are too yellow, that usually means that everything else that is as light as the teeth are also too yellow. There is also a good chance that a good portion of the rest of your image is also too yellow. If not, then that means the teeth are in fact the right color.

The best way to change the color is with curves. I'll assume that you are in RGB. Open a curves adjustment layer with the half black, half white circle at the bottom of the layers palette. Ctrl+3 to go to the blue curve. Ctrl+Click on one of the teeth best representing your problem and that will put a point on the curve at the point in the blue range that your teeth reside. Use the up arrow to raise that point until the value of the RGB are all more similar. Before you make the selection the blue will be much less than the other two.

This will of course alter the rest of your image but as I said, it probably suffers from the same problems as your teeth do. Learning curves is a good idea to make the best corrections in your photos.

imann08

BTW, if for some reason, all you want to do is change the color of the teeth, and I highly recommend against this in most cases, then you can use the dodge tool which is on the left side of the tool palette, 7 toolds down. Make sure you click CTRL+3 and then ~ first so that you can work in the blue channel only but view the composite image as you work. Make sure you go back to the composite channel afterwards (CTRL+~) so that you don't continue to work in the blue channel only. These are the two ways I would take care of your problem depending on how you want to do it.

Shay Stephens

Shay's super easy olde fashioned teeth whitening

1. Select the teeth. Not critical, you can go into the gums or lips a little.
2. Feather the selection a few pixels (e.g. 5).
3. Copy the selection and paste it as a new layer and set the opacity of that new layer to 75%.
4. Open the hue/saturation dialog and make the lightness of the yellow channel 100.

You can of course adjust any of those settings to taste, but that pretty much does it for me. Looks good, but still natural looking.

j photog

thanks!
when i get home i'm going to try all these options...and then come backa and tell you how i have messed them up..hahah. we'll see. thanks again....any more suggestions are welcome.

nikos

Make a selection of the teeth, copy them to new layer & desaturate them.

Nikos

Shay Stephens

nikos wrote:

Make a selection of the teeth, copy them to new layer & desaturate them.

Nikos

Gray teeth are not pretty teeth

gmonkeh

Here's a nice little trick you can try as well. Create a new blank layer and change the blending mode to color. Pick a soft white brush at around 40% opacity and just paint away the yellow.

Quick and easy........ (that's what she said)

Lex

nikos

Shay Stephens wrote:

Gray teeth are not pretty teeth

I haven't had to do a touch up yet where the client had solid yellow teeth. Most of the time, I can quickly tame the yellow hue by desaturating the teeth about 80-90% via the Hue & Saturation adjustment layer.

If I ever have to correct for a set of choppers that scream out like a brightly lit neon sign in a dark alley, then I may also need to make some adjustments to the lightness slider. As of yet, I haven't had to correct for this

Nikos

j photog

trouble
i have to say i'm having it.
why is it that magic wand is such a pain?

Stustaff

j photog wrote:

i have to say i'm having it.
why is it that magic wand is such a pain?

Dont use the magic wand it is a nightmare for something like teeth! Just use the lassoooooo

Shay Stephens

Stustaff wrote:

Dont use the magic wand it is a nightmare for something like teeth! Just use the lassoooooo

I agree, lasso is the best tool for selecting teeth.