GIMP Tutorial: How to whiten teeth

How to whiten gray or yellow teeth in a photo using the dodge tool in GIMP.  You would achieve better results using some advanced selection or masking, but these are matters for another tutorial.  Nevertheless, this technique should give you very decent results without making the teeth look artificial.

The only tool needed for this process is the Dodge-Burn tool.  A Google Image search for “yellow teeth” will undoubtedly give you this picture of Hillary Clinton...

in the top ten results – so why not use it?  You can download it here: Hillary .

Open it up in GIMP by first launching GIMP and selecting “File>Open” from the menu.

For the time being, we’re not going to worry about correcting other issues in this
photo, although we may come back to it in future tutorials.  We want to concentrate on giving Hillary a slight cleaning.  Let’s zoom in closer to that smile of hers.

From the left bottom of the main panel, click on the zoom drop down arrow and choose 400%.

That brings us in nice and close.

From the Toolbar panel, select the (1)Dodge-Burn tool.  When you select a tool from this panel, you can modify the settings or properties for that tool in the properties section below.  We will leave the (2)Opacity at 100.  Choose and appropriate brush for the job.  In this case (3) Circle 11 will do fine.  You may have to scale your brush by using the (4)Scale slider in order to ensure your brush covers enough area so that you don’t have to use too many strokes all the while keeping it small enough to avoid accidentally touching the gums, lips or gaps between the teeth.  Make sure the tool is set to (5) Dodge and that we are affecting the (6)Midtones range.

The Dodge tool “lightens” areas you brush over while  Burn effectively “darkens” them.  We chose to work on the midtones because neither the shadows(darks and blacks) nor the highlights(reflections) are yellow.

With a brush size or scale of 0.40, work on each tooth individually.  When using the tool, do not click areas repeatedly.  Simply hold down the left mouse button and brush over the tooth in one single motion.  When done, proceed to the other teeth.  Be mindful not to brush over the gaps, gums or lips as this will discolor or “lighten” those areas.

This is what the teeth look like before and after the first pass with the dodge tool:

If you like, you could make one more pass with the dodge brush.  This is what we end up with – not too white – not fake looking – just better.

There you have it!

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