Mono manual dodging and burning

Stop press! Adobe did not invent image enhancement techniques

For traditional darkroom photographers, image enhancement was not simply used for special effects, it was an integral part of the print-making process. No landscape was complete unless the sky was burned-in ( given more exposure under the enlarger) to give it a richer tone, and portaits almost always benefitted from delicate dodging ( less exposure) in key areas. These dodging and burning techniques make a huge difference in black-and-white, and most fans would argue that the image shot by the camera is just the first half of the process. Here’s an unmodified black-and-white image. It has a good range of tones and is satisfyingly sharp, but it lacks the contrast and careful tonal control that black-andwhite photographs need in order to stand out.

In Elements or Photoshop, create a new, empty layer and set the blend mode to Overlay. Now select the Brush tool, set the colour to black and paint on this layer over areas you want to darken. A big, soft brush works best.

To ‘dodge’ parts of the image, set the brush colour to white instead. The beauty of this technique is that the picture underneath is preserved intact and you can repaint over the top layer to tweak the effect.