Understanding whiten tooth in Lightroom is important to supply natural-looking portraits.

Once you shoot portraits exterior a managed studio setting, you possibly can hardly ever obtain brilliant and color-cast-free tooth straight out of the digicam.
Normally, the tooth get shaded by the lips and, consequently, get underexposed. As an alternative of brilliant white, they appear greyish.
Second, the setting produces a shade forged that makes tooth look unnatural. For instance, a sundown creates an orange/yellow shade forged, a brilliant open sky produces a blue shade forged, and combined lighting indoors can produce completely different shade anomalies.
It implies that even when your mannequin has excellent white tooth with none stains, you continue to want to the touch them up in Lightroom throughout post-processing.
The objective of tooth enhancing in Lightroom is to brighten the tooth and take away any unnatural shade forged. Fortunately, that is very simple to do.
The right way to Whiten Tooth in Lightroom
Adobe launched a serious replace to Lightroom in October 2021, which triggered a shift in the way in which tooth whitening is completed. The Brush Adjustment software, which you may beforehand use for tooth whitening, was renamed to Brush software and moved to the Masking module.
This tutorial will educate you whiten tooth in Lightroom utilizing the brand new brush software to include it into your workflow.
You simply must observe these subsequent steps:
1. Create New Brush Masks
- First, you should open a picture in Lightroom.
- Within the Develop module, click on on the Masking Icon. That is located within the prime proper bar, which appears like a circle with a dotted define.

- You’ll discover that you’ve many masking choices accessible. For this specific edit, it’s important to select the Brush Icon: Click on on “Brush” – there’s a brush icon proper subsequent to the phrase

- The Brush Panel will come up. Right here, you possibly can see the Masks Panel and a New Masks and New Brush part beneath it. Beneath are the sliders you’ll be utilizing.

2. Choose the Tooth Whitening Preset From the Impact Menu
- Within the Brush panel, go to “Impact” (beneath the “Brush” space)
- Click on on the drop-down arrow and search for the impact’s title (Tooth Whitening) from the record. Choose it.

You’ll discover that Saturation and Publicity are actually set to values applicable for tooth whitening. This preset impacts solely two parameters: Publicity +0.40 and Saturation -60
3. Choose the Auto Masks Choice
Earlier than going additional and making use of the impact, there may be one other essential step you mustn’t overlook beneath any circumstance. Test the Auto Masks field. You’ll see it beneath the Brush changes field.

What does Auto Masks do? Primarily, it helps your Brush keep throughout the strains when portray. That’s as a result of masking occurs provided that the colour and distinction are comparable. If there’s a distinction between these two, the masking received’t work – that’s, you received’t be capable of apply it.
So in case your arms are shaky, you don’t ever have to fret about going over the road.
4. Zoom in on the Space of the Tooth
You need to make sure you get most precision and element. That is simply an additional step, albeit one which makes an enormous distinction. The ultimate edit ought to look as pure as attainable.
To Zoom in on the tooth:
- Press down the Spacebar and maintain it down
- Click on within the space of the moth

5. Modify Brush Dimension
Within the Develop module Brush part, go to the Brush field the place your brush changes sliders are, and go to the “Dimension” slider. Play with it till you attain the specified measurement.

Alternatively, you need to use:
- the shortcuts “[“ and “]” to extend or scale back the scale of the Brush
- the mouse wheel to alter the scale accordingly
6. Activate Masks Overlay
Sometimes, Masks Overlay is activated from the beginning. But when that’s not the case, you are able to do it by following these steps:
- Head to the Masks Panel
- Ensure the field subsequent to Present Overlay is ticked – if not, examine it your self.

Alternatively, a neater solution to activate masks overlay is just by utilizing the shortcut “O” in your keyboard.
*Be aware: You too can select your overlay mode – these modes spotlight the affected areas and may be any shade or opacity you need. To do that, merely click on on the ellipsis picture subsequent to “Present Overlay” and examine your choice from the dropdown menu.

7. Begin Portray Over the Tooth
The final step is definitely portray over the tooth.
Drag the Brush alongside the areas that you just wish to be whitened. Take your time – the extra you concentrate, the less changes you’ll must make in a while. The Masks Overlay will point out the affected areas.

Now that we’ve acquired our tooth lined (actually) let’s take a look at how to make sure the masks is making a distinction. To do that, uncheck Present Overlay within the Masks panel (shortcut “O”) – to see the precise adjustments.

Now let’s take a look at what we are able to do if our masks isn’t correct sufficient. Let’s say it has an excessive amount of protection above the lip—if that occurs, then you might have a few choices:
Undo the final retouch:
- Use the keyboard shortcut “Management + Z” for WINDOWS or “Command + Z” for Mac.
- Go to the highest bar -> Click on on “Edit,” -> click on on “Undo.”
Delete Brush:
- Proper-click the comb picture -> From the menu, go and click on on Delete “Brush 1”
8. Refine the Masks
If meaning eradicating any changes you made exterior of the world you needed to have an effect on, it’s important to subtract from the choice by turning the Brush software into the Eraser brush. Simply observe these steps:
Head again to the Masks panel > choose Subtract > Brush. Then arrange your brush settings as follows:

- Ensure your Brush’s measurement is good – if not, you possibly can all the time alter accordingly.
- You need to ideally set density and Circulation to 100
- Feathering needs to be excessive – 75+ is an efficient quantity.
Afterward, merely go to the picture and choose the areas you wish to subtract from.
9. Change the Power of the Enhancing Impact
- You may make yet another extra change to your impact, and that’s altering the power of the impact of tooth whitening.

10. Last Consequence
Once you disable the Brush Masks, you possibly can preview earlier than & after results.
As you possibly can see, I managed to brighten the tooth and take away the yellow shade forged.

The right way to Whiten Tooth in Lightroom | Conclusion
That’s it. All of the steps are boiled right down to a simple course of. Have your pictures prepared and observe the steps above, and also you’ll be capable of whiten anybody’s tooth in Lightroom shortly and fantastically. Ensure the ultimate edit doesn’t look synthetic and unrealistic, so play with these sliders at your personal threat!
And don’t overlook to smile!