Dodge and Burn with Ease
 

Just thought I would share with you an amazing way of Dodging and Burning which does not destroy the depth or density of the colours in your photographs.

1 open your jpeg or tiff
2 open Layers palette
3 from the tool box on the left of the screen choose Brush about 30 pixels soft edge
4 Holding down the Alt key on your keyboard, click New layer mask on layers palette
5 a new layer box will appear
6 from the Mode drop down box choose Soft Light
7 check tick the box below marked Fill with soft light neutral colour gray 50%
8 Click OK
9 at the top of the screen – turn down Opacity to 10 or 15%
10 make sure your foreground colour is Black and Background White
11 with the mask active you can then paint with the brush over your shot
12 painting with Black will darken and white lighten
13 toggle between Black and White and paint away to you hearts content
14 as you are painting on the Layer Mask your photograph is not affected
until you are happy with the results and you decide to Flatten Image.

Edit - you can use the bracket keys to enlarge or make the brush smaller to suit the area's you are manipulating.


Enjoy.

Cheers

Brian

thanks for the hint ,I will try on my next image

Hi, Brian. I have been using this technique not for some time. I would add one other step to this. Use the "opacity" slider to blend the dodging layer with the under layers. This is useful especially for pulling out deep shadows and tameing highlight.

Digishooter.