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ignatiusjk
19-Jun-2008, 16:17
I'm still getting use to Photoshop and have a question. How do I burn or dodge a specific area of a print? I've been using the highlight and shadow adjustments but need to burn in a small area of a print. Please make it simple like I said I'm new to photoshop.

Ron Marshall
19-Jun-2008, 16:37
New layer, choose Soft-light mode, and check fill with 50% grey.

Paint on this layer, in black to darken, in white to lighten.

butterflydream
19-Jun-2008, 16:47
Or choose burning tool from tool palette, adjust the diameter, range etc and point the circle to area to burn and click. Do it on the new copy of the layer and when finished merge the layers.

Richard M. Coda
19-Jun-2008, 16:52
Ron's way is the preferred method. I actually use two layers - one for burning and one for dodging - as well as a layer underneath those two for spotting.

You can also use a number of techniques to burn specific ranges, like using a Threshold layer to burn only shadows, with any necessary feathering.

Bill L.
19-Jun-2008, 17:25
I will often use a curves layer, lighten/darken to taste for the spot, fill the curves layer mask with black, and use a white/gray brush to bring back the effect where I want it. You can use this approach to "anchor" parts of the curve so they are not affected (e.g. drop the shadow tones, but leave the highlights where they were originally). I have found times when this technique gives a more smooth blending of the dodged/burned areas with the rest of the photo.

Cheers!
Bill

Ben Hopson
19-Jun-2008, 17:30
I also use the new layer filled with 50% gray method for burning and dodging. If you alt click on the new layer icon it will open a window that will allow you to select the blending mode (I prefer soft light rather than overlay) and a check box for the option to fill with 50% gray. It is a quick way to accomplish the necessary steps in one place. After creating the layer/layers select the brush tool and black to burn or white to dodge. Play with the brush opacity and flow % to find what works best for you. The flow % usually works best for most of my burning and dodging set pretty low. Also, you might want to make the brush fairly soft for a smooth blending where you are working on the image.

There are several ways to burn and dodge in Photoshop. This one is a straight forward method and is non-destructive.

Ken Lee
19-Jun-2008, 18:43
Just as there are many ways to do something in Photoshop, there are countless free Photoshop tutorials on the web. By comparing the approaches of different contributors, we can learn a lot.

Daniel_Buck
19-Jun-2008, 20:03
I do like Bill, make a curves layer with the contrast curve that I want, and then I brush in the mask where I want it go to. You can use a brush (real nice with a wacom tablet!), you can use gradient ramps (handy for skies and forgrounds sometimes!) or anything else you want.

Beauty of that is, you can always go back and alter the placement of your dodge/burn, AND you can alter the curve. So, if the placement of the effect is good, but not strong enough or not giving the tones you want, you can tweak the curve a bit more.

You can also duplicate that curves layer, invert the mask and do another curve, now you are affecting the opposite areas of your previous layer, with a different curve.

You can nest curves into folders as well. You can put a broad gradient ramp on your folder mask, and nest a curves layer inside of that folder. You can paint in the details areas on the curves layer mask, and alter the ramp on your folder to fade in your other curves layer. So many possibilities! The only thing that I think would make it better, is if it were node based and not layer based, and if you could have a spline/bezier that has independent soft falloff to each point on the curve. Like in some high end compositing packages, that is SUPER handy for masking off areas.

That's the method I've settled on, after trying many others. It seems to make the most sense to me.

Brian Ellis
19-Jun-2008, 21:15
For a small area I use the burn tool, set the size to the approximate size of the area to be burned, set Flow at 100% and Opacity at about 10% - 20% depending on the density of the area to be burned, and click/bursh. If that doesn't look right I hit Edit > Undo and try again. I really don't understand the need for masks, curves, gradient ramps, and multiple layers just to burn in a small area.

Kirk Gittings
19-Jun-2008, 21:28
I save small areas to be modified for the very end of editing and use a snapshot and history brush set on linear burn/linear dodge at about 3% to finish small areas and modify local contrast. Linear burn and Linear dodge give a much more refined effect than the regular burn dodge tool, because it doesn't lighten or darken the brush area uniformly, but does it proportionally. I set the history states to 40 so I can back up. This is more of a painterly way to finish off a print.

Daniel_Buck
19-Jun-2008, 21:46
For a small area I use the burn tool, set the size to the approximate size of the area to be burned, set Flow at 100% and Opacity at about 10% - 20% depending on the density of the area to be burned, and click/bursh. If that doesn't look right I hit Edit > Undo and try again. I really don't understand the need for masks, curves, gradient ramps, and multiple layers just to burn in a small area.
more control, just another way to do it :) For me, I really don't understand the need to keep undoing and re-trying till you get it right. With curves layers, just just adjust the curves real time, until you get what you like, no un doing :) But that's what works for me, might not work well for others who see things differently :)

Frank Petronio
19-Jun-2008, 22:59
A Wacom tablet is pretty much essential for most people, but somehow some folks manage to do it fine with only a mouse....

The normal Burn and Dodge tools are OK for quick work on small areas of greyscale images. The same tools will "burn" you when you try to use them on color stuff or larger greyscale areas. Which is why people do some form of painting through lighter and darker layers instead of the obvious but not quite perfected Burn and Dodge tools.

Kirk Gittings
19-Jun-2008, 23:15
Frank what I described above is maybe 2 seconds slower than using traditional b&d tools.

Greg Miller
20-Jun-2008, 08:00
I personally would advise using only method involving layers. Other techniques (burn & dodge tools, history brush) cannot be reversed after you have closed the file or exceeded your history states. Anything done with a layer can always be adjusted later. I'm always learning new techniques and my tastes are always changing. Virtually every time I re-open a file after several months I find myself changing it.

Kirk Gittings
20-Jun-2008, 08:22
Greg, at this point I will already have 8-10 layers and of course it is saved just prior to the final polishing. If I want to change it in the future I simply pull up the "pre-polish" version and work on it. This is a technique I learned from two friends, George DeWolf and Alan Labb, two of the best printers in the country and it works exceedingly well.

jetcode
20-Jun-2008, 08:25
Ron's way is the preferred method. I actually use two layers - one for burning and one for dodging - as well as a layer underneath those two for spotting.

You can also use a number of techniques to burn specific ranges, like using a Threshold layer to burn only shadows, with any necessary feathering.

Richard ... how do you create a spotting layer?

jetcode
20-Jun-2008, 08:29
Just as there are many ways to do something in Photoshop, there are countless free Photoshop tutorials on the web. By comparing the approaches of different contributors, we can learn a lot.

could you post a few links to support your statement?

Daniel_Buck
20-Jun-2008, 08:51
could you post a few links to support your statement?

There are tons of tutorials on the internet, just do a search, you'll find them!

Search google for "Photoshop Tutorials" or "photoshop layer mask tutorial" or "photoshop dodge burn tutorial" or anything else!

Lenny Eiger
20-Jun-2008, 09:53
I have used the 50% gray layer, but only as a last step. The long way around is the one that is right for me.... Use a wacom tablet, possibly start with select by color range, and select the stuff you want to adjust. (In color, you can use channel masking as well.) Once you have it selected, use it as a mask on your curve adjustment layer. Make sure the edges of your selection are soft or it will look like a cutout... (Don't use the lasso except for gross adjustments, never on an edge.)

Lenny
EigerStudios

Greg Miller
20-Jun-2008, 09:58
Greg, at this point I will already have 8-10 layers and of course it is saved just prior to the final polishing. If I want to change it in the future I simply pull up the "pre-polish" version and work on it. This is a technique I learned from two friends, George DeWolf and Alan Labb, two of the best printers in the country and it works exceedingly well.

If you like the effects of linear dodge and linear burn, why not create a new layer with blending mode set to linear dodge or linear burn? You would get the same effect but with the added flexibility of easily making changes later, and without the hassle of saving unpolished versions, saving history points, and the potential for running out of history states.

For linear burn you would fill your layer with white, which means the layer would have no effect, and burn using a regular brush with foreground set to black. For linear dodge you would fill the layer with white and paint with black.

Kirk Gittings
20-Jun-2008, 11:03
I used to do it your way. I found it cumbersome for final tuning. I will already ogtentimes have upwards of 8 layers at this point. As I said somewhat before, the facility of doing it the way I described is very painterly and IMO lends itself to creativity. I know this goes against the current "all layers all the time" method.

Frank Petronio
20-Jun-2008, 17:56
I find it faster, at least because I am working with only a 4gb laptop most of the time, to commit to my choices and flatten layers once I do the work. It's an old habit developed from the early days of Photoshop when every operation took toooooo long and keeping the file size minimized was (and still is) the mantra. I much rather be working on a 150mb x 3 times for overhead = 450 mb memory load versus 150 x 8 time plus change = 1.2 gb memory load for Photoshop to move around.

Seriously, once you get it cropped and spotted, save it as a reference file and just run with it. Depending on your size and agility, it may be faster to just commit to changes and drop layers as you go, work quickly and get the darn thing done -- even if it means starting over once in a while.

It's also just plain mentally healthy in my opinion. Decide and commit -- non of this waffling crap that means you'll be tweaking it for all eternity. It's only a photo -- I rather backup a smaller file too.

Those of you with 16gb towers can ignore this ;-)