Photo Retouching – Teeth Whitening Photoshop Tutorial
January 11, 2007 by Oli · 12 Comments 
This is our second tutorial on the subject of photo-retouching, in the last we learned how to retouch skin, in this we will be whitening some teeth without the need to go near a nasty dentist.
Our subject will be this rather jolly, but yellow toothed, gentleman :
First off, zoom in to the mouth area and press ‘q’ to go into masking mode, then select a suitable sized brush and begin coloring in the teeth – because you are in masking mode it will paint over the area in a red shade. Don’t worry about going over the edges as you can just delete any bits you messed up with the eraser brush. It should be looking like this :
After you’ve colored-in the teeth, press ‘q’ again and a selection will appear round them, now on the menu go to select : inverse. Now press ctrl+c and then ctrl+v which will paste the teeth onto a separate layer. Now begins the whitening process!
On the menu, go to image > adjustments > desaturate :
Which should give you :
Doesn’t look right does it ? All desaturating does is remove color, now we need to tinker a little bit with it to get it looking correct.
Go to, image > adjustments > Hue & Saturation and move the lightness slider up, on this I have used +30 but it will differ from photo to photo. The aim here is to make the teeth super-white :
Now right click on the teeth layer and select blending options :
Slide the opacity down until you have the desired look, think realistic, not Ross off Friends Glow in the dark teeth!
You may have a few bits that don’t look right, such as the teeth in shadow :
Just use the eraser brush to delete those bits :
And now we’re done – just look at his pearly white gnashers now :
You can also download the psd for this tutorial.
Excelent, its very easy. and practical, thank you very much.
Cool tutorial i didnt know how to use the desaturate feature and ive allways just adjusted the contrast, your way is far better thanks.
Thanks for a great tip. Your desaturate method makes for a more natural method of lighter teeth then some of the other tutorials I had read.
Thanks again!
Mark
Wow… this software is amazing, it is a whole new way of dental whitening
. Your tutorial is very easy to understand for the novice and was a pleasure to read.
regards
Peterdehaas.
Great tip ,you explain this very well.
Thanks
Steve.
wow, thanks for the easy steps!!! I am learning photoshop on my own, and you made that sooooo easy!!!!!
Nice!
This is a great tutorial with regards this software, I am very happy with this information as it looks very easy to understand.
thanks, this really works:)