Don't use the Spot Healing Brush Tool
for removing braces in Photoshop!
Even when it seems like it does a good job,
you might not be able to see the imperfections.
Notice the smudging that appears when I darken the layer.
Instead, I recommend two techniques for removing braces in Photoshop.
First, I'll show you a technique that should work with any photo.
My name is Jesus Ramírez.
Let's jump right into the tutorial.
We'll apply this first technique on the top teeth.
Start by creating a new layer.
You always want to work non-destructively.
In other words, you want to keep your adjustments
separate from your original photo in case you're unhappy with your results.
Then enable the Eyedropper Tool from the Toolbar.
And from the Options bar,
set the sample size to 3 by 3 average.
Sampling from an average of several pixels
will give you a better color representation of the color you select.
Now enable the Brush Tool,
hover over her teeth and
hold Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac
to temporarily enable the Eyedropper Tool,
which has the settings we just applied.
Then, click to sample the color of her teeth.
Notice that this is now the foreground color.
Before you paint, reduce the Flow and the Opacity.
You want to build up the effect rather than paint the color at full opacity.
If you have a graphics tablet,
then click on this icon from the Options bar to enable the pressure sensitivity.
By the way, here's a keyboard shortcut
that's going to be very useful for this process.
You can use the left and right Bracket
keys on the keyboard to decrease and increase the brush size.
The Bracket keys are to the right of the letter P in North American keyboards.
So, hover over your image, tap on the right Bracket key.
This is the area where we sample that color and we can start painting in.
You can see how I'm painting with this off-white color over the braces.
And you can hold Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac to sample a different color
and continue painting until the braces are gone.
I know this may seem like a tedious process, but this is really one
of the best methods for removing braces, and you will not get any of the smudging
like with the Healing Brush Tool or other tools in Photoshop.
Next, we'll work on the edges between the teeth.
By the way, something I didn't mention is that I'm using a very soft brush.
To do so, you can click on this icon
and reduce the hardness down to zero.
But I prefer to use the keyboard shortcut.
If you hold the Shift key
as you tap on the left and right Bracket keys, you will adjust the hardness.
Notice the brush preview in the options
bar as I use this keyboard shortcut to increase or reduce the brush hardness.
Make sure that you see a soft brush here and continue painting.
By the way, if you're learning something
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Now I'm going to zoom in and we're going to work on the edge here.
To do so, I'm going to select some of the darker areas of the tooth here
because I want that same basic color here on the edge.
I'll reduce the brush size and I can just paint up and down like so.
Then sample from the color right inside of the tooth here and paint in these edges.
This is my result,
after spending a few minutes working on the top row of teeth.
As you can see, everything looks fantastic.
Now, let me show you a second technique which is going to be a bit faster
and that's going to be for the bottom row of the teeth.
For this technique, also create a new layer to work non-disruptively.
Then enable the Smudge Tool, which is nested under the Blur Tool.
Make sure that Sample All Layers is checked.
Next, make your brush size just a little smaller than the tooth.
Zoom in so that you can see better.
Now, you're going to do is click and drag down.
Then hover over the middle and wiggle your
brush side to side to remove those straight edges.
Move on to the next tooth and do the same thing.
Make sure that you keep that line of the edge of the tooth.
Now that I smudge all the edges, this is what it looks like.
Obviously, we're not done yet, but the braces are gone.
All we need to do now is make sure
that these pixels cover the braces and nothing else.
To do so, you can hold Alt on Windows,
Option on the Mac and click on the Layer Mask icon to create a black Layer Mask.
This inverted Layer Mask is black, which hides all the contents of the layer.
Now we need to paint with white to selectively reveal the teeth.
Let me show you what I mean by that.
With the brush tool active and white as your foreground color,
you want to paint over the mask to reveal the teeth.
Notice that I still have a low Opacity
and Flow, and that's because I want to build in the effect.
But once you get close to the edges, you might want to increase them
so that you can create a sharp edge between the lips and the teeth.
By the way, here's the trick.
You can click once,
hold Shift and click again, and Photoshop will draw a straight line
between those two points, and you can use this technique if you like.
When you're done painting in your mask, this will be your result.
Before and after.