Removing Wrinkles, Whitening Teeth, and Adding Color to Enhance Photos

The picture I will be using was on a CD that was packaged with Fireworks 4 f/x & Design written by Joyce Evans. Fireworks has come a long way since then and with a just a very few simple tasks you can make a complete makeover to photos. Open the photo below in Fireworks or open a photo you wish to use.

First you will need to zoom in to get a closer look at the areas you want to work on. To zoom in click the set magnification menu at the bottom right corner of the document window and set it to 400%.

Next select the smudge tool:

I used the following settings. I used the color so I could get rid of the dark circles under the eyes. I picked the color with eye dropper from the face. You will need to play with these settings depending on what picture you are working on:

Move your brush over the wrinkle areas. Deselect the smudge color in areas that don't match the setting. This will just blend the pixels close to the area in the actual photo.

Next you want to brighten the teeth. Click the magic wand tool set to the following setting:

Zoom in to about 800% and click on the teeth to select it. To select more hold the shift key down while you select the rest of the teeth.

Next we will brighten the teeth. Click Filters > Adjust Color > Brightness/Contrast to open the Brightness Contrast dialog box:

Set the brightness to around 35:

I went one step forward. I wanted to add color to her lips. Select the Polygon Lasso tool with a hard edge:

To add to the selection simply hold down the shift key and this lets Fireworks know that you want to select other areas. Your selection should look similar to my photo below:

Now you need to convert the selection to a path. Select > Convert Marquee to Path. This separates the marquee from the actual photo.

Select the fill color to red . The lips should now appear unrealistic as shown below:

We will now use a blend mode on the layers palette to bring a more realistic look to the lips. On the layers palette click on the blend mode menu and select color from the drop down list. Make sure you are on the marquee layer in the layers palette.

Adjust the blend mode opacity on the layers palette until you get a realistic appearance. I used a setting of about 54%:

Deselect (Select > Select None). Zoom back to 100%. My finished product is shown below:

Much better don't you think?