Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Tutorials
Techniques / Safe Dodge & Burn
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers / Techniques / Safe Dodge & Burn)
Although Photoshop has tools specifically labeled Dodge and Burn they work directly on pixels and therefore are destructive. A far more flexible approach to Dodging and Burning is the non-destructive Dodge and Burn method I'm about to describe. We're going to take advantage of the flexibility of Layer Masks and the power of the Blending Modes. To begin, make a new Adjustment Layer but don't make any changes. I'm going to choose Exposure since it's one that we don't often use, but you can use nearly any of the adjustments. The thing is that you're not going to adjust the Sliders at all. Come back to the Layers Panel and change the Blending Mode to Multiply. You'll see that the image becomes one stop darker which is usually far too dark, but don't worry. Come up to the Masks Panel and click Invert. That will make the Mask black and hide the effect of that Layer from the entire image so that the image looks just the way it did when we started. If I turn off the Visibility here you can see there's no difference. I'm going to double-click on the Type to remind myself that this is the Burn Layer, the layer that's going to make the image darker. I'm going to make a second layer just like that to lighten the image, so I'll choose Exposure, I'll come back, and this time I'll change the Blending Mode to Screen which makes the image one stop lighter. Double-click on the Text, call it Dodge, come up to the Mask, click on it, click Invert, and now we have one layer that can make the image lighter and one that can make the image darker. Make sure that your Color Picker is set to the default colors of black and white. You can use the D key or press the little Icon here, and make sure that white is set to your Foreground color. Either press X or the little Switch Foreground and Background color Icon to make sure that white is your Foreground color because if you were brushing black on top of black you wouldn't be doing anything. The trick to using these Dodge and Burn Layers is that we reduce the Opacity of our brush to about 10 to 15 percent. You can do that using the Slider or a shortcut is to use the number keys where 1 equals 10 percent, 2 equals 20 percent, et cetera. You want to gradually build up the effect; you don't want to apply it all at once. We'll begin by making the top of the hill a little bit lighter, and you're not going to see a dramatic change initially, but every time I let go of the cursor and click again I'm building up the effect. I'm going to come over this hillside and do it a little bit more, and now I'm going to come to the Burn Layer. I'll make my brush just a little bit larger and I'll come through here a couple of times and maybe even a third time over part of it and as you can see, as I darken some of the areas I'm adding a sense of depth with Shadow. Here's before; here's after. Now if while I'm working I go too far and do something I didn't mean to do, such as that, it's not a problem because I can hit the X key to make black my Foreground color, change my Opacity back up to 100 percent, come back over that part of the image where I just made a mistake, I'll come back up to the Dodge Layer so I can lighten it again, swap my Foreground and Background colors. Whoops! I left the brush at 100 percent. You can see why you don't want to be working at 100 percent. That's way too strong. I'll hit Command-Z to undo that since I just made that mistake, come down to 10 percent, and work with a lowered Opacity that I can control readily. This method is extremely flexible and powerful. Using it you can add a lot of depth and dimension to your work, highlighting certain areas and darkening others. You can also lighten areas to make Shadows just a bit more subtle, or to vignette corners to guide eyes inward. Although setting up these Layers takes a bit of work the good news is that you can create an action to create Dodge and Burn Layers for you, then all you have to do is paint on the Layer Mask. I'll describe how to do that in the movie on Actions.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers |
| Author: | Ellen Anon |
| SKU: | 34036 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-74-2 |
| Release Date: | 2009-09-23 |
| Duration: | 8.5 hrs / 112 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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