Post Processing: Dodge & Burn

My first experience with photography was before digital really became available to the masses (or at least not to the 16 year old, broke art student masses). Phone cameras were shocking compared to today's standards and disposable cameras were a waste of time for someone who wanted changeable lenses. So I worked with film, always in black and white and all but lived in my college's dark room, which was fine, because by the time I was in my second year I pretty much had the place to myself. One of the first techniques I learned there was 'dodging and burning' a method that involved obscuring areas of photo paper as it was being exposed under the enlarger to over and underexpose the areas of the image that needed to be darker or lighter than they were on the original negative. Sounds like a headache? It was!

 But my familiarity with the approach meant that it was pretty much the only thing I used photoshop for in the early days with my DSLR, and still it's my favourite tool to use because of it's ability make an otherwise perfectly exposed, but somewhat flat photograph full of depth and dimension.

I find that dodging and burning work best on black and white shots as when they're used heavily on colour pictures you also have to contend with the change in colour saturation and it can make the picture look obviously overworked. Too much use can also lead to the loss of detail, in the shot below for example the areas I've highlighted were really blown out by the dodge tool, completely removing any detail with patches of solid white. A similar issue happened with the burn tool in the bottom left corner of the shot where all detail was removed by shadow. Sometimes, however I think under and over exposing in small sections gives the overall image some balance. Before the editing, I think this shot looks incredibly flat, but by dodging the areas that I did creates an illusion of highlights where there were only a few.

 I used the dodge and burn tools here to paint in light and shadow around the raindrop and enhance it's definition, using different sized brush strokes depending on the section of the shot. The dodge and burn tools work by darkening dark pixels and lightening light ones, so for them to work well there has to be enough of a balanced exposure in the first place. You could try to darken an area of solid white, but it wouldn't look very flattering just as painting in highlights within an area of shadow wouldn't work very well. Better to simply create a real life highlight or shadow and then lighten or darken it afterwards.

This technique doesn't lend itself well to portraits for me, as light falls in a far more subtle way on faces and because skin tends to form a large area of a similar tone sometimes brush strokes for any kind can be obviously noticeable. The dodge tool can brighten reflections of light in eyes and lips and make skin appear smoother in some images, while the burn tool is perfect for darkening lashes and used to slightly darken shadows on skin.

As with most photoshop editing, I find that these techniques work best when only used in small amounts. We tend to except digital alterations more when they're used only a little, too much and our eyes know they're being lied to. It's always best to get a shot as perfect in-camera as you can before making adjustments in post not only to save time but to maintain image quality.