Pixiq

The terms “burning” and “dodging” used in digital image-processing are borrowed directly from traditional darkroom parlance. In the film days, these two methods were done with your hand, with cutouts in cardboard, or even with chemical bleaching.

Digital photography allows for infinitely more control in all respects using a variety of tools and techniques for burning and dodging. After making more wholesale enhancements to your black-and-white image as needed, you may want to add smaller refinements, where just a taste of burning and dodging can be effective. This work is done at the end of your workflow, right before sharpening and saving. It is always a good idea to take a few moments to contemplate where these enhancements can be most effective.

There are several ways to apply burning and dodging effects digitally. One way to selectively add density (burning, or darken an area) is to make a New Layer (in photoshop: Layer > New > Layer) and use the Brush tool to paint deeper tones on it. From the New Layer dialog box, select an Overlay blending mode and check off the Fill with Overlay-neutral color (50% gray) box. This allows you to add density to select areas using the Brush tool. When using the Brush for this task, I choose a soft edge and keep the opacity at 30% or lower; this gives me more control because each stroke is cumulative.

While doing this burning work, I like to brush mostly where light and dark tonal values meet, with particular emphasis on darkening the corners and edges of the image to create a direction and center of light, as shown in the photo directly above. To lighten areas using this technique (dodge), simply switch the Foreground/Background Color Box in the Tools Palette so the white box is in the front and use the Brush as a dodging tool. I did this to the branches of the tree, lightening them in the photo below.

Workflow

This is image of a rock fall along the Chama River in New Mexico illustrates a typical workflow for a black-and-white landscape photo.

1. I began by adding a New Adjustment Layer > Curves to increase the contrast because the picture was shot in flat light caused by the shadow of the cliff falling over the scene. This screen shows both Highlight and Shadow sliders pinched a bit toward the middle to meet either end of the graph, which will make the light and dark areas pop more from the picture.
2. Next I created two New Layers, both with Overlay blending mode and filled with neutral gray. I selected black and white Foreground Color Boxes and used the Brush to selectively add (burn) and subtract (dodge) density from the image to polish it just a bit more.
3. The Layer Palette shows both the Burn and Dodge layers. The Sharpen layer (see next step) is done as a final step.
4. This last step, sharpening, makes the image crisper and defines the many edges in this shot. I used a technique known as High Pass sharpening. The first step is to highlight the Background layer and make a duplicate of it (Layer > Duplicate), which I named Sharpen. After highlighting the Sharpen layer in the Layers Palette, I went to the Filter option in the menu bar to select Other > High Pass, opening the High Pass dialog box, which looks kind of like an etch-a-sketch. This sharpening method requires a bit of practice but is very effective. You want to move the Radius slider so that many of the lines show through the layer without seeing a tracing of the entire image. This sharpens selectively, not overall, so it is ideal for an image like this. Try different settings to see the results and you’ll get a good feel as to how much to sharpen for each image.

All images (c) George Schaub