Photo shop question

[ignatiusjk]

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]

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]

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]

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.]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.