Photoshop Tutorial: Vampire Teeth

Pick a photo

Select a tooth

Make a selection around the tooth you want to become a fang using the freehand lasso tool. I've drawn around the right lateral incisor so you get a full view of the tooth as it changes. Technically it should be the cuspid tooth that we extend. This is the tooth right behind, but it wouldn't be as suitable for this demonstration. We will adjust the correct tooth on the other side in a short while. Once the selection is made, copy and paste (Cntrl + C, Cntrl + P) to place the selected tooth on a new layer. You can rename the layer to 'Tooth' if you like. You do this by double-clicking on the layer so a text box appears.

Extend the tooth

Now go to the Edit>Transform>Distort tool. Click on the bottom part of the frame around the selection and drag downwards to extend the tooth. Move each corner and edge until you have a tooth in the right position. Don't worry about overlap and shape at this stage. For realistic effect the tooth needs to be about twice the length of the others. Hit the enter key once you're happy to remove the anchor point.

You can reduce the opacity of the tooth layer so you can see the detail below which will help you place the tooth in the best position.

Create a Layer Mask

With the new layer you've just created selected, click on the Layer Mask icon. The Mask will allow you to remove detail, with the paintbrush tool and the foreground colour set to black, so you can create the sharp fang we're looking for. You can also add parts back in if you take too much away by switching the foreground colour to white. With the paintbrush selected, start to shape the tooth by removing the corners to make the pointed shape. Use the brush with a very fine soft edge so that the resulting fang isn't too sharp edged. Remove any overlapping tooth from the gum area and from surrounding teeth too.

Do another tooth to match

When you have done this repeat the process with the relevant tooth on the other side. As mentioned earlier this time I have used the correct cuspid, tooth. Even though the teeth are the wrong combination it still looks pretty accurate don't you think? You will notice that the tooth I extended on our right has changed in tone. It was slightly yellowed and the extension exaggerated this, so I used the colour correction option to make it lighter and more like the surrounding teeth. When you're happy with the result flatten the layers and save the photo.
 
Fangtastic!!!