Photoshop: How to Dodge or Burn areas?

The Dodge tool and the Burn tool are based on a traditional photographer’s technique for regulating exposure on specific areas of a print. Photographers hold back light to lighten an area on the print (dodging) or increase the exposure to darken areas on a print (burning). The more you paint over an area with the Dodge or Burn tool, the lighter or darker it becomes.

Select the Dodge tool or the Burn tool .

• Choose a brush tip and set brush options in the options bar.

In the options bar, select one of the following:

• Midtones to change the middle range of grays

• Shadows to change the dark areas

• Highlights to change the light areas

Specify the exposure for the Dodge tool or the Burn tool.

Click the airbrush button to use the brush as an airbrush.

• Alternatively, select the Airbrush option in the Brushes palette.

• Drag over the part of the image you want to lighten or darken.

Examples: To give you an example when applying step 5 I will be using this wallpaper:

You can see from the wallpaper above that there is a shadow going across his face and the eyes are barely visible. So let’s use the Dodge tool to lighten it up. Following the steps listed above I have my settings as:

Also, I selected the glowing yellow color on his face next to he shadow to help blend in better. If you go with white you will notice a drastic change

Next, brush a bit on the dark areas of his face to bring out the eyes and make it a little more uniform.

Then duplicate your layer and alternating Dodge and burn go over the bright and dark areas you want to enhance. I brought out the chest plate and his weapon a bit and fixed his right washed out leg. (roughly for this tutorial)
Here is my outcome:

That’s all there is to it! Experiment with the settings especially the Range and Exposure and you will soon be producing some great enhancements to your images. Also, don’t forget to change the color of your brush to help blend better.

I hope this helps you out and I look forward to seeing your artwork incorporating this technique soon.

Learn to create this signature in photoshop:

What’s needed?

Time & patience…nothing more.

In this tutorial we will cover clipping masks, and the use of the Dodge and Burn tools