A Visual Guide to Capturing Good Shade Photos

Capturing Good Lab Photos can improve your dental practice

While shade is important - your lab technician will be able to do a BETTER job for you and your patient if you send a few more vital images.

• Full Face, Lips Retracted, Teeth Apart

This one is probably the most overlooked image, but can be critical to success! This image is our favorite since it tells nearly the whole story and lets us compare the interpupillary line and the occlusal planes of both arches to horizon. We recommend taking this photo with patient upright sitting or standing.

• Pre-operative Shade (ie you need to do this at the VERY start of your procedure BEFORE you do anything!)

The reason is that you do not want the teeth to dehydrate (which they will do as you work), since they will then appear lighter and your color match will be off.Sure, you can just write down which shade you want and that might be "OK"; BUT if you are trying to match color, translucency and unique characteristics, a well-taken shade photograph will work much better for you. The biggest tip here is that you need to nail the exposure and position of the shade tab. Also, why before? The reason is that you do not want the teeth to dehydrate since they will then appear lighter and your color match will be off.

• Cross-polarized with Shade Tab

Sometimes dentists feel an optional image depending on your ceramist, but we love this image! Why do we love cross-polarized images? The purpose of this image is to help see even more detail by eliminating any reflections from the flash. It almost lets us see below the surface to see additional character and how we may need to layer or additional staining to characterize the restoration into a more natural finish. Keep shade tab in same plane as your preparation so it gets the same amount of flash.

• Preparation Shade

AKA a “stump shade”. Please don’t ever call it that with your patient! For the preparation shade, the same rules apply here as with the preoperative shade photograph when it comes to position of the shade tab. It needs to be in the same plane as your preparation so it gets hit by the same amount of flash.

---