Dodging and burning in photography tips tutorial

The dodging and burning in Photography is a printing technique used in the darkroom for giving some areas of an image more or less exposure. Those burning areas of the image give it more exposure as a result it darkens the area, and the dodging does the opposite it gives less exposure so the area lightens up. Our goal with this technique is to recover lost information that is caused sometimes due to high contrast exposures.
It is very simple to do this technique using Photoshop and is helpful to restore our images. If you ever had a print where the highlights have been blown out, or maybe a landscape where some details have been lost in the shadows. Than this technique could come as a lifesaver in moments like this and can be done in tonic correction of certain areas of images.

The followings are a step by step tutorial of this technique in Photoshop:

Step#1 Adding an adjustment layer level: Open the image in Photoshop and use the Adjustment Layer button on the layers palette, and add a Levels Adjustment Layer to it.

Step#2 Making Tonal Adjustments: Because our main concern with the dark area underneath our object we will use a mid-tone stunted slider for the middle of the histogram by making our tonal adjustments, Sliding the scrubby slider to the left side will make the area lighter . Observe how all of your image becomes more lighter. Don’t worry, later on we’ll be using a layer mask to correct it. For the time being, pay attention to the areas that you are try to dodge. When you are satisfied with the tonal degree that area, push the OK button.

Step#3 Adding a Layer mask: If you add an Adjustment Layer it will also add a Layer Mask to that layer on its own. You will see how there are 2 small windows in your Adjustment layer. The right side window is the Layer Mask. First make sure to have the right window selected, than click the paint bucket tool and choose the color black from it. Position the cursor over your image and click the inside of it. When you add the color black it helps to hiding the adjustment layer. Now we’ll choose the color white to expose the Adjustment Layer anywhere we need a lighter shade.

Step#4 Revealing the Adjustment Layer: Choose a brush with a proper size for the area and make the opacity go low to about 15%. Pick the color white and start cautiously to paint on the area where you want it to lighten, keep painting until you reach the preferred dodging level. If you think the amount of dodging is more than you want, just double click the Adjustment Layer option and keep moving the scrubby slider more to the right to make it darker. If it still isn’t enough for you enough, than move the scrubby slider more to the left.

The similar technique can be done to Burn. Use the same instructions, just this time make the adjustments to the opposite direction. Now add a new Adjustment Layer and rather than moving the slider to the left again, move it to the right side to make the image darker. Adding the Layer Mask and use white, painting the parts that you are trying to make look darker.