Part 2.  Brighten Eyes and Teeth.

Use lasso tool for selection

Have you ever wonder why some glamorous portraits of beautiful people have bright eyes and white teeth in spite of them having a history of chain smoking? Well, not everyone is perfect; your subject may have red shot or dull eyes due to inadequate sleep. It is good practice to shoot a portrait with a catch light in the eyes to give that extra twinkle.

Potatoechop is here to help you. Firstly I will explain the use of the selection tools. These tools help you select a section of the photo to be modified. These are precision tool so use it carefully. Off course if you have a waicom pad it will make this process easier.

There are basically 3 tools that you can use for selective modification:-

1. The marquee tool – rectangular, elliptical single row and single column
2. Lasso tool – lasso, polygonal lasso and magnetic lasso
3. Selection – quick selection and magic wand.

Play around with these tools and see the results.

Select the white of the eye

My workflow for brightening eyes and teeth are:-

1. Ctrl J to create a new layer
2. Use a lasso tool to select the eye white / teeth
3. Use the “curve” to lift the midtones. Do this gently, don’t overdo it.
4. Ctrl D to deselect
5. It is done.
6. Do the same steps from 1 to 4 for whitening of the teeth. However this subject has a good set of teeth so teeth whitening is not necessay.

Note that you can also brighten the reflections in the black of the eyes.

Use "curves" to adjust the whiteness