The Digital Dentist - 9/10/07

Oral hygiene must be on the decline these days. I don’t have the stats to back it up, but it seems like every portrait I shoot reveals yellow teeth. Sometimes it may be a case of bad brushing, but more often than not it seems to result from the digital camera. Whatever causes it, I want to fix it. My favorite method is pretty simple: I use Photoshop’s desaturation sponge to eliminate the color, but in bad cases this just turns the teeth gray. So then I use the dodging tool, set to midtones or highlights, and a low intensity to turn those gray teeth into pearly whites. Speaking of which, if all this dodging and desaturating is too much work, you can always invest in a Photoshop plug-in like PearlyWhites from Image Trends. The filter automatically whitens and brightens, saving you minutes of work and saving your subject years of expensive and painful dental work. Visit www.imagetrendsinc.com.

Photo courtesy of Image Trends