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Photoshop Burning and Dodging
part I

Dodging and burning are procedures used on every exhibition grade black and white print made, darkroom or digital. Burning and dodging on color darkroom materials is simply inadvisable, since it alters color as well as tone. These two actions are what add the finishing touches to a basic print. They add roundness, depth, and adjust localized contrast. Skillful application of these measures in the darkroom often requires the agility of a gymnast, but not so digitally. Digital use is more dependent upon understanding all of the methods available in photoshop. The burn and dodge tools are only one method to accomplishing the task. Here is a tip that allows much greater burning and dodging control for color and monochrome.

USING ADJUSTMENT LAYERS AND THEIR MASKS

Usually we make a selection first, then add various adjustment layers, for which photoshop automatically creates a mask. At this point we will begin with the image open, then create a curves adjustment layer by clicking the half black and half white circle at the bottom of the layers pallet and selecting curves. In the image shadow area find the tone you want lightened, place the cursor upon it and click. You will observe a ball on the curves graph indicating the relative tonal position on the graph, remember the ball position and release the mouse button. Click on the curve adjustment line, at the approximate location of the former ball, and lift to lighten the shadows to their needed tone and release the mouse button. You will observe that the highlights have elevated and may be too hot at this point, but we will deal with that momentarily - click OK. Click off the eye icon at the left of the curve adjustment box in the layers pallet and observe that all of the basic data remains untouched. Had the dodge tool been used the basic image pixels would have been altered. Click the eye icon back on. If you need to access or modify the curve, double click on the half black and half white circle (layer thumbnail).

To the right of the layer thumbnail is the chain link symbol followed by the layer mask thumbnail, which is currently a white box. Since no image selection has been made the box remains white. Had an image selection been made the layer mask thumbnail would have been partially blackened out. Remember, all black areas would indicate the image areas not effected by the selection and the white areas indicating areas effected by the selection.

Select the paintbrush from the toolbox and normal mode with 100% opacity in the tool option bar. Brush edge and size may be selected and altered in the option bar as well (note: brush size may be altered at the keyboard with the ] or [ key). Select black as the foreground color in the toolbox and paint out any items that you do not want to be effected by your previous curve selection, such as the highlights. Notice the layer mask thumbnail has become blackened to correspond to the image area painted out. Click off and on the eye icon for the adjustment layer, in the layers pallet, to observe how the darkened areas are now not affected by the curve adjustment. This essentially has dodged the shadows to become lighter and burned the highlights back to the original tone. Holding down the option key (alt key in windows) click on the layer mask thumbnail to observe the image mask. You may notice and darken in any missed areas on the mask with your brush tool. Option click to return to the image.

To unmask a portion of the darkened area of the curve adjustment, thus revealing more image highlights, select the brush tool, swap the foreground color to white (click the two headed arrow above the black and white squares or use the X key), decrease opacity to 30%, and paint white in the areas to be lightened. To observe the difference made to the mask, click the eye icon of the adjustment layer off and on. You may continue using the brush tool until all burning and dodging is satisfactory.

The advantage to manipulating the image in this manner is that no pixels were lost or altered from the original image state. The mask may be simply clicked off or discarded and all of the original material remains as if it just came from the camera or scanner. Had the burn and dodge tools been used, without saving the original file to revert to, you would be unable to go back to the original state in the event of an error.
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