Tool School: Dodge and Burn
Master two essential Photoshop tools and add shape and definition to your images with local adjustments
These two Photoshop tools help you manage tone like a darkroom master
The two interlinked Photoshop tools Dodge and Burn perform a simple yet hugely powerful task: they let you lighten or darken areas of our images. Whether it’s a landscape, portrait or any subject matter, subtle dodging and burning can draw the eye to the areas that matter most while de-emphasising those that don’t.
Photographers have been doing this for over a century. In the darkroom, dodging and burning controlled how the light from an enlarger would expose a print – by either holding back light (dodging) or concentrating extra light (burning) in different areas. A racquet-shaped tool would often be used to shade areas, and the photographer’s own hand could be used to focus light on a specific portion of the print, hence the Photoshop icons for each tool.
Of course, the Photoshop incarnations of these tools take things much further. You can target specific parts of the tonal range, protect tones from clipping, and edit images non-destructively with complete control...