Lighten and Darken with Dodge and Burn Tools

Dodging and burning originated in the darkroom when photographers discovered that they could salvage negatives containing areas that were too dark or too light by adding or subtracting a bit of exposure as an enlarger made prints. An enlarger makes a print by projecting an image of a negative onto a piece of photosensitive paper. During the exposure, the darkroom worker can reduce the amount of light falling onto the paper by placing some object (often a disk shape of cardboard or metal impaled on a piece of wire) in the light-path to dodge part of the image. The worker can burn other parts of an image by shielding the entire image from the light except for a small portion exposed through an opening, such as the fingers in a cupped pair of hands. The Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop adopt their icons from the most popular real-world tools used to achieve these effects in the darkroom.

However, the Photoshop counterparts are a great deal more flexible than the versions used in the darkroom. For example, the worker in a darkroom varies the size of the dodging or burning tool by moving it up or down in the light path. Unfortunately, the closer the real-world tool gets to the paper, the sharper it appears, forcing the darkroom worker to move the tool more rapidly and frequently to blur the edges of the lighten or darken effects. With the Photoshop Dodge and Burn tools, you can set the size of the tool and its softness independently simply by selecting a brush of the size and hardness or softness you require. You can also set the Photoshop tools to operate primarily on shadows, midtones, and highlights. You can adjust the degree of lightening and darkening applied by specifying an exposure, too.

Using Dodging and Burning
The Dodge and Burn tools can be very effective tools, but remember that you can’t add detail that isn’t there. Keep the following in mind:
- When you lighten very dark shadows that contain little detail, you end up with grayish shadows.
- Darkening very light areas that are completely washed out won’t look very good either.

In either case, you’ll want to use the Dodge and Burn tools in moderation, and work only with small areas. To dodge or burn a portion of an image, just follow these steps:
1. Open an image with under- or overexposed areas and choose the Dodge or Burn tool from the Tools palette.
Press the O key to choose the active toning tool, or press Shift+O to cycle through the available toning tools until the one you want is active.
2. Select a brush from the Brushes palette.
Larger, softer brushes spread the dodging and burning effect over a larger area, making blending with the surrounding area easier. You can choose the same brushes available with any of the painting tools, including preset brushes from your library.
3. From the Range options, select Shadows, Midtones, or Highlights.
Use Shadows to lighten or darken detail in the darker areas of your image, Midtones to adjust the tones of average darkness, and Highlights to make the brightest areas even lighter or, more frequently, darker. The original image (left) had both dark and light areas, so I dodged the shadows and burned the darker stones.
4. Choose the amount of the effect to apply with each stroke using the Exposure slider or text box.
5. Paint over the areas you want to lighten or darken with the toning brush, gradually building up the desired effect.
The Exposure control is similar to the Opacity control offered by other painting tools, but it’s especially important with dodging and burning. Using a low value is best (I often work with 10 percent exposure or less) so you can carefully paint in the lightening or darkening you want. High exposure values work too quickly and produce unnatural-looking, obviously dodged or burned areas in your images. For an even softer, more gradual effect, click the Airbrush option in the Options bar.
6. If you go too far, press Ctrl+Z (Ô+Z on the Mac) to reverse the stroke.
7. When you finish, choose File➪Save to store the image.