**Program Tutorials** : Paint Shop Pro : *Technique

This tutorial will show you how to brighten a person’s smile in an image using Paint Shop Pro 9.0.

1.  Open your image and create a duplicate of it (Shift+D) then close your original.  (For this example, I’m using “Smile” by photographer joanajoe from the Stock.Xchng website.)

2.  Using the Magic Wand Tool, being selecting the teeth.  Use the Edit Selection tool located in the Layers palette for more precise selection. 

3.  When clicking the Edit Selection button, any selections previously made on the image will appear red.  This represents the areas you are selecting.  To edit your selection, switch to the Paint Brush tool and paint with white to make your selection (paint with black to delete portions of your selection.)  Be sure to zoom in if necessary.

4.  When all areas that need to be whitened are selected, click the Edit Selection button again to show the resulting selection.

5.  Create a new Raster layer (Layers > New Raster Layer > OK).

6.  Using the Flood Fill tool, fill the area just selected (the teeth) with the color white.  Deselect the teeth (Ctrl+D).

7.  Looks strange, huh?  Here’s the “magic.”  In the Layers palette, change the blend mode until you achieve the desired result.  In this example, the blend mode was changed to Saturation.

Here is the result:

Here are the original photo and the retouched photo for comparison:

Depending on your photo, the blending mode may differ from the example.  Be sure to experiment with the various blend modes as well as the layer opacity.