will help you remove the braces off an image.
It contains two images.
They're really the same, the only difference is that one has noise and the other does not.
We're going to work with the image without noise first, and then, I'm going to show you
what to do in case your image has noise, since some of the techniques I'm going to show you
will smooth out some of that noise.
But, anyway, so we have our "smile" layer.
I'm going to create a new layer.
It's going to be a blank layer and that's the layer that we're going to work on because
we always want to work non-destructively and we don't want to destroy the pixels of the
original layer.
So, first, let me show you what you're probably thinking that I'm going to do or what you've
probably seen other people do, which is use either the Clone Stamp Tool or the Healing
Brush Tool.
And they both do an okay job, for example, the Spot Healing Brush Tool, to be exact.
I can click and drag, and at some point, I'm going to start getting rid of the braces,
and, you know, that can work okay.
It looks fine.
By the way, I'm working on this layer here and I have Sample All Layers selected so that
I can sample the layers below and I can generate the new pixels on this blank layer.
But, anyway, I want to keep painting and I'm going to get rid of the braces as best as
I can, so, you know, that looks okay.
I can also use the Clone Stamp Tool.
Hold Alt, Option on the Mac, click on a place to sample from, and then, clone from that
place.
Again, I have Sample All Layer Selected, so I generate the pixels on this new layer.
So things are looking okay and I can spend a little more time sampling from different
areas and cloning out the different areas of the braces.
But the problem is that even though it may look okay to the naked eye, it's really not
that good.
You can sort of see here how I have different shadows and different colors in areas where
there shouldn't be, and it becomes more obvious when it create a Curves Adjustment Layer and
make the image darker when I drag this down.
And look at how bad the Cloning and the Healing Brush Tool make the teeth look there's a lot
of different values in shadows and things that really shouldn't be there.
So I usually don't use the Clone or Healing Brush Tool when removing braces or things
like that from teeth because it doesn't always generate a good result.
So what I'm going to do instead is I'm going to delete this layer and create a new one
just to start from scratch.
And I want to show you two different things that I like to do.
The first is actually very simple.
Select the Brush Tool and paint with the color of the teeth, so I'm just going to hold Alt,
Option on the Mac, click on the area right above the teeth and just simply start painting.
And, by the way, I have the Opacity pressure sensitivity set on my Wacom tablet.
If you don't have a Wacom tablet, you can use a mouse.
Just bring down the Opacity and bring down the Flow, and then, just build on the color
of the teeth.
So I'm just going to select different areas and paint, and if I enable the Curves Adjustment
Layer again, notice it looks much smoother and you don't get those dark tones around
the teeth, and I can just keep painting to remove the braces.
And when I get to the edge of the teeth, like an area there, I'm going to zoom in so I could
see what I'm going to do.
I'm using this as a sample, color this on the edge, the darkest color, then bring the
size of that brush down by hitting the left bracket key on my keyboard and just painting
that in.
Do the other side.
And if I zoom out, you'll see the result.
That's before, that's after.
I'm not going to take the time to do all the braces on each individual tooth in this tutorial,
but I will show you some of the more complicated areas, that way you know what to do, so I'm
going to do this one here, and then, the ones back here.
So, for this one, I would just follow the contour of the teeth, so I'm just going to
hold Alt, Option on the Mac, click on the place to sample from.
And then, do what I've been doing, just keep painting and sort of follow that contour there.
I'll do that here.
And then, up here, same thing, I would remove it by selecting the color right above that
and just paint it out.
In this area back here, these are all shadows, so I can actually just get away with painting
with black, so I'm going to select this dark color here.
It's not quite black, and then, just paint those away.
And there's the lip, select the color of the lip, and bring some of the color back.
It might be a little too light, so I'm just going to make it darker, and, maybe, select
this darker color over here and add more to the shadow.
Right, so something like that.
I'm going to zoom out just so you could see, and it's looking much better.
Obviously, you want to take a little more time than what I did there, and maybe come
back and take some of the colors from, maybe, the darker areas here on the corner, and then,
just paint the outline of the tooth here.
And if it's not dark enough, maybe, you can darken that up.
There we go.
Fit to screen and that looks much better.
So this is before and this is after, and, again, for this one, you will do exactly the
same thing.
This is the last one I'm going to do, and then, we're going to go to the bottom ones
because we're going to use a different technique.
So I'm just going to sample the color right below that, and just paint, as we've been
doing.
I'm going to go a little bit faster on this one just because you already got the hang
of it.
And, again, select one of these darker colors here for the edge of the tooth here, so something
like that, and I'm going to zoom out.
And you can keep adding shadows if you think it needs them, and I think it needs them.
In this case, I'm going to select the Brush Tool again, and just, maybe, select one of
these other colors, and I have pressure sensitivity turned on so I can paint very lightly to add
little shadow there, so that's before and that's after.
I'm also noticing that there's a big difference in color here between the top of this tooth
and then the bottom, so I'm just going to select the color up here and just sort of
integrate that color a little bit better, so there's no sharp edges; so that's before
and that's after.
And for this bottom part, what we're going to do is actually create a new layer, just
so we can have the layer for the top teeth and the layer for the bottom.
So, on layer two, which is bottom, and I'll just rename them accordingly—"Bottom," "Top."
I'm going to do a different technique and I'm going to, again, zoom in, just so we can
see it a little bit better.
And I'm just going to use the Smudge Tool—this one here.
And I'm going to sample all layers and all I'm going to do is simply smudge the teeth
way down.
And I know I'm going into the lip and that's okay.
I'm going to do that for all of them.
That one, I'll just paint out, just like I did the ones on the top here.
And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go back into each individual one.
I just sort of tap and go to the side there, so we don't have those streaks, so just a
little bit smoother.
So I'm just tapping and going from side to side, just a tiny little bit; something like
this.
And now that I have that, I'm going to zoom out and I'm going to hold Alt, Option on the
Mac, and click on the layer mask to hide everything inside of that layer.
I'm going to zoom in again and I'm just going to paint with white in areas where I see the
braces.
I'm going to actually remove the pressure sensitivity on the Opacity just because it's
making me go slower than I want to go, so I can just start painting these areas back
in.
And you, obviously, would do that for all of them, and take your time when you're going
right up against the lip here, right on that edge.
That's where you really got to be careful.
So what I'm going to do here is just go back into the actual layer and not the layer mask.
Make sure that the focus is not on the mask.
Make sure it's on the actual layer thumbnail.
Hold Alt, Option on the Mac, select the color, and then, paint that away.
And, actually, for it to show, I got to obviously paint with white on the layer mask.
So then, now, I'm going to paint with white on the layer mask to make that show.
And there it is.
And one other thing I want to show you before we finish this tutorial is if you want to
add more of those highlights on the teeth, you can do two things.
You can actually use the Clone Stamp Tool, so add a new layer, sample highlights from
an area, and just paint them in another area or you could also simply select the Brush
Tool, select that highlight color, bring the brush size down by tapping the left bracket
key on the keyboard, and you could just paint your own highlights as well.
So you can do either or whatever works better in your case and this is the highlight we
created there, right here.
And what we're going to talk about now really quick is what do we do if the original image
has some noise, has some texture?
So let me go ahead and turn off the smile layer here and right beneath that, we have
the same image but it contains a lot more texture.
And, obviously, the work that we've done doesn't translate very well because, now, the paint
and the smudging smooth everything out.
So what we need to do is add some of that texture back on to these layers.
So just for the sake of saving time, I'm just going to hold Shift and click on all three
and press Ctrl E, Command E on the Mac, to merge all of them into one layer.
You probably don't want to do that in your own project.
You probably want to apply the effect that I'm about to apply now to each individual
layer, but just to save a little bit of time, we're going to do it all in one layer.
So we have the layer here with the adjustments and what you can do is go into Filter, Noise,
Add Noise, and just adjust the noise accordingly so that it resembles the noise on your image.
I'm just tapping the Up key on the keyboard to add some noise.
I'm just going to leave the Noise set to 5.64 for now, press OK, and if you think it's too
much, just go into Edit, Fade, and then, you can even adjust the Opacity from here, and
that might be a little bit easier to adjust, so, in this case, maybe right about here.
If I fit to screen, then, you'll see now that the areas that we painted and smudged contains
some of that noise, so that's what you want to do for your image.