How do I talk to a patient about what their smile used to look like? Pull out an old photo. I like to ask about a wedding photo, the first marriage one, because people genuinely smile more in that picture than in any later one. That single prompt opens up the whole conversation about anterior esthetics without me forcing it. Sometimes they want back what they had. Sometimes they want something they never had at all. Either way it surfaces fast. Once that desire is on the table, you have real tools to work with, like running a digital smile preview [...]