Photoshop Dodging & Burning Techniques
Photoshop allows you to electronically dodge and burn your images. These terms come from traditional darkroom photography. Dodging blocked some of the light reaching the light-sensitive photo paper from the enlarger so that those parts of the image would be lighter than others once the photo was developed. Burning allowed some areas of the paper to receive more light so that they would be darker than the rest of the image.
Other People Are Reading
-
Dodging Tool
-
The dodge tool is found on Photoshop's tools palette and looks like a small dark circle on a stick. This is because traditional darkroom dodging tools were often simple cardboard shapes held on a wire wand that could then be positioned over the photographic paper without the photographer's hand getting in the way. This allowed for some fine adjustments to the final image's tonal qualities. Using Photoshop's dodge tool, you can selectively lighten parts of your image with much more control than was possible in the darkroom. The dodge tool has options that allow you to select a brush size so you can do pixel-fine adjustments or affect large areas at a time. The range setting lets you decide whether to dodge highlight areas, midtones or shadows. And the exposure setting determines how much of a change the dodge tool makes, with the larger numbers making bigger changes.
Burn Tool
-
The burn tool is found in the same Photoshop palette and looks like a hand curled toward the left. You may need to use the fly-out menu option to find it, because it's on the same square of the tool palette as the dodge and sponge tools. The burn tool is basically the reverse of the dodge tool: you use it to make parts of the image darker instead of lighter. Burning can be very helpful in making shadow areas darker to help remove unwanted detail in less important parts of an image. Like the dodge tool, you can select the brush size, decide whether to burn highlights, midtones or shadows, and change the exposure setting.
-
Sponge Tool
-
The sponge tool also appears on the same palette square as the dodge and burn tools. Appropriately, it looks like an oval sponge. This tool doesn't make the image lighter or darker; instead, it saturates or desaturates the color of the pixels that you use it on. The sponge tool can be very helpful for bumping up the colors in a faded or dull image, but you should be careful not to overdo it. You can also use the sponge tool to desaturate parts of an image that might be too bright.
Vignetting
-
Vignetting is a technique where you darken or lighten the edges of an image to essentially create a frame around the image. The vignetting can be very subtle or distinct, but it helps to draw the viewer's eye towards the center of the image. You can use the burn tool to darken the edges of the frame or use the desaturate option on the sponge tool to remove colors, or a combination of both. Vignettes can also fade at their edges to create a soft circular or oval shape. This approach was popular with portraits and you can recreate it by using the dodge tool to lighten the edges of your image. To prevent accidentally changing an area you don't want to touch, make a selection first and then use your dodge, burn or sponge tools to manipulate the image.
-
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images
