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Not Just Black and White  - or

Non-destructive Dodge and Burn in Photoshop

category: digital photography and image editing

Photoshop's Dodge and Burn tools are great for cleaning up the delicate edges of masks. Set the Dodge tool to Highlights in Range, and it will only lighten the light side of the edge. Set the Burn tool to Shadows in Range, and it will only darken the dark side of the edge. The only other setting for the Dodge and Burn tools is Exposure, which works like opacity in a paintbrush. Set the Exposure higher if your edges are already close to black and white and to lower when they are shades of gray and just go over them a few times. You can toggle between Dodge and Burn with the Alt key and change the size of your brush with the bracket keys.

On your image itself, the Dodge and Burn tools with their Range settings can be useful, just before printing for instance, to enhance a catch-light in the eye of the subject or something similar; they can however be destructive and sometimes the range settings just get in the way. You can paint a nondestructive Dodge and Burn to lighten and darken areas of your image, without an adjustment layer and layer mask, and a lot more specificaly than using Curves with this technique.

Create a new layer between the background layer and any adjustment layers. Set the blend mode of your new layer to Softlight. Then, with a soft brush set to about 20 percent opacity, paint black over areas of your image that you would like to darken and white over areas that you would like to lighten. If you want it lighter or darker, just paint over the areas again. You also have the option of lightening the opacity of your Dodge and Burn layer or, for more pronounced effect, changing the blend mode to overlay.

He said on 05.17.05 @ 12:48 PM CST