Burning & Dodging Revisited

[pchaplo]

I know its been beaten to death, but how are you now approaching your local area adjustments akin to burning and dodging? The burning and dodging tools in photoshop are destructive unless you create a new layer with a copy of the image, make the burn/dodge, the use a layer mask that can be painted to control where the edited area are visible.

Are you using adjustment layers such as curves and layers, then painting the layer mask to control where the adjustments are applied? I do. Thats my approach. I enjoy the process and just wanted to ask how you work and compare notes. Perhaps thats all there is to it? Or perhaps you are doing it differently, or have found some approaches even within the adjustment layer + mask approach that works well for you ...and that you could share?

Paul Chaplo

[mdijb]

Here is link to Russell Browns site, where some interesting tecniques are explained.  I like his method using the history brush for burning and dodging on a duplicate layer and then merging.

http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html

MDIJB

[Tim Gray]

I don't remember where I got this from...

New Layer, mode Overlay, fill with neutral  (all from the new layer dialog box)

use the dodge and burn tools on the "new layer".  Non destructive in that to reverse too much burn or dodge, just paint the gray layer with 50% gray - obviously you can change the opacity of the brush to get the effect you want.

[boku]

I don't remember where I got this from...

New Layer, mode Overlay, fill with neutral  (all from the new layer dialog box)

use the dodge and burn tools on the "new layer".  Non destructive in that to reverse too much burn or dodge, just paint the gray layer with 50% gray - obviously you can change the opacity of the brush to get the effect you want.
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That's a John Shaw technique. I don't know if it is documented online, but it is in his current workflow publication and Van Os Seminar.

I hear it works very well, I'm just too lazy to research it.

[Graeme Nattress]

I take this layered approach:

Say I want to add some light, I make a new levels adjustment layer, adjust the white point a little, but mainly increase "brightness" by moving the gamma control. I make the areas I want to be brighter look "correct" not, worrying too much about the rest of the image.

I now set the adjustment layer to black so it has no effect, then begin painting in white, gently, in the areas I want brightened.

I can now tweak the overall amount of light I'm adding by adjusting the layer opactity, or tweaking the levels operation.

I then apply a similar layer, tweaking black point and gamma for darkening.

Advantages with this method is that you can do gross and subtle effects quite easily. I find there's limits to how much light you can add with the "overlay" method, and often found I had to stack multiple layers to get the effect I needed.

Graeme

[Jonathan Wienke]

I duplicate the image in a new layer, apply a Levels gamma adjustment to brighten or darken, then add a transparency mask to the layer and airbrush it to fade the effect in or out to taste. When I'm completely satisfied, I'll merge the layers back together. But that's certainly not the only way to accomplish the task.

[JLK]

I know its been beaten to death, but how are you now approaching your local area adjustments akin to burning and dodging? The burning and dodging tools in photoshop are destructive unless you create a new layer with a copy of the image, make the burn/dodge, the use a layer mask that can be painted to control where the edited area are visible.

Are you using adjustment layers such as curves and layers, then painting the layer mask to control where the adjustments are applied? I do. Thats my approach. I enjoy the process and just wanted to ask how you work and compare notes. Perhaps thats all there is to it? Or perhaps you are doing it differently, or have found some approaches even within the adjustment layer + mask approach that works well for you ...and that you could share?

Paul Chaplo
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Paul,

It's not Photoshop, but this is one of the reasons I've switched to using Lightzone for much of my editing. Non-destructive local contrast adjustments are so pathetically easy in this program that it makes editing a joy. Uwe has a recent workflow article on just this issue on his site.

Regards,

Jim

[henk]

I don't remember where I got this from...

New Layer, mode Overlay, fill with neutral  (all from the new layer dialog box)

use the dodge and burn tools on the "new layer".
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It is better to use the paintbrush instead! and paint with foreground colosrs whithe for dodging end black for burning (just press d on the keyboard for black and white) rest the same as Tim

Henk

[thompsonkirk]

It is better to use the paintbrush instead! and paint with foreground colosrs whithe for dodging end black for burning (just press d on the keyboard for black and white) rest the same as Tim

Henk

There are a couple of ways of doing this:

1.  Paintbrush set to about 8%, so that you go over the area several times without danger of darkening/lightening it too much at once; or:

2.  Airbrush set to 3% (normal) up to 8% (burning in light corners/skies), which feels a little more like darkroom dodging & burning.    

An alternative (my own preference) is to use Softlight blending mode instead of Overlay, for gentler results.  

I wouldn't attribute the technique to any particular guru.  Barry Haynes was teaching it 5 years ago.  I think it should be attributed to T. Knoll, whenever he added, to the New Layer dropdown, a checkbox for filling some blending modes with neutral gray.

[Phuong]

these two approaches dont seem to look the same to me. (i.e., they dont give the same results)
using the burning/dodging tools (the destructive way) i can burn/dodge the tones separatedly without affecting the other tones
while using the 50% gray filled softlight/overlay layer approach with the brush tool, i'll affect all tones altogether.