Digital scrapbookers – whiten teeth easily

I’m going to let digital scrapbookers and photographers in on a little secret.

No one’s teeth look like that. Unless they have just had $10,00 worth of veneers and brightening.

Teeth dull and yellow with age and make us look, well, umm…. old.  Not our best.

But it is so easy to fix.

Here’s how: (this works for all versions of Photoshop and Elements.  Below is for Elements with the Photoshop directions in ()

Here’s my starting picture – it’s me and my sister at Christmas this past year.  Notice while I look great (as always…)  my teeth, well, not so much.

Here’s a close up – yikes!

To start duplicate the current layer just in case you make a mistake.  The easiest way to do this is to hit Ctrl-J or drag your layer to the Copy Layer tool.

Now grab your Magic Wand tool (just type W or select it from the tool bar) and make sure your setting are Tolerance 32 and Anti-Alias and Contiguous are checked on:

Zoom up by hitting Ctrl – + and click on a tooth.  Hold down your shift key and click on more teeth to add to the selection.  It doesn’t have to be perfect but try to get just teeth.

Now the magic – go to Enhance – Adjust Color – Adjust Hue/Saturation (Photoshop go to Image – Adjust – Hue/Saturation)

Make sure to change to pull-down from Master to Yellows and that Preview is checked and Colorize is unchecked. Lower the Saturation till the teeth look noticeably whiter and then raise it up a little.  It’s easy to over do it.  We are looking to improve but now wipe out the color completely.  It’s also okay to add a tiny amount of Lightness – no more than 2-10 or the teeth look too white!

And that’s it!  Here’s the before:

And after:

All told this take about a minute to do.  That’s a lot better than a trip to the dentist.

Let me know what you think be leaving a comment.  Or do you do teeth whitening a different way? Tell us!

Other posts you will enjoy:

1. 25 Days of Christmas – Day 8: Deals for Digital Scrapbookers Jenn and I are great believers that digital scrapbookers should be printing their best layouts. All too often we see scrappers designing beautiful layouts with great photos, meaningful journaling and incredible design and then letting it...
2. Digital Scrapbookers – Get a deal on Mozy You know Jenn and I have written on the importance of digital scrapbookers backing up your important files. Now one of the best on-line backup services Mozy is offering a huge discount now thru November 30th....
3. What digital Scrapbookers shouldn’t do to their memory cards Pst!   pst! hey you – come here.   Wanna see something?   Ouch!  This is a 4 gigabyte compact flash we found in the parking lot at the lab.  Now we get a lot of...
4. Quick Tip Tuesday – Blue Skies – making a nice day better! This tutorial is designed for Photoshop and PSE, but has only been tested in CS3 and up and PSE 6 and up. However it may work in other versions, so give it a try! Often, when...
5. Make quick plaid paper for your digital scrapbooking Need some quick background paper for your digital scrapbooking?  Learn how to create a plaid paper that is easy and color coordinates with your picture.  This works in any version of Photoshop or Elements.  (This was...