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- In this video,
we're gonna talk about dodging and burning.
Now there are several ways
of doing dodging and burning,
and also several applications.
But before we get into any of that,
we need to first understand
what is dodging and burning
in the first place?
Well, in simple terms,
dodging means brightening,
and burning means darkening.
That's just it.
It is as simple as that.
Now you might ask,
"Why would we want to dodge and burn?
Why would we want to brighten,
and darken certain areas of the image?"
Though there can be several reasons.
Number one, you might just wanna
even out the tones.
Number two,
you might just wanna brighten up
a harsh shadow,
reduce the effect of it.
Number three,
you might even wanna create a shadow.
Number four,
you might just wanna add
some dimension to your photo.
Number five,
maybe you wanna add some makeup or stuff.
So there the applications
as I told you are limitless,
and the reason why it is limitless
is because it's just simple brightening,
and darkening on certain areas of the image.
Now, when it comes to fundamentals
of retouching or basic retouching,
we use dodging and burning
to add dimension to our portrait.
Without dodging and burning,
our portrait can look a little flat.
With dodging and burning,
we try to add depth, dimension,
and add a little shape and structure to the fix.
But the question is,
how can we really use dodging,
and burning to add dimension to an image?
And what does it exactly mean visually?
Well, I have an example for you.
Let's take a look at this circle.
It's a simple circle,
blue circle, right?
Let's say the light is coming
from this direction.
Okay.
And if the light is coming from that direction,
you might wanna brighten up these areas, right?
And we might wanna darken up these areas.
All right.
If you wanna turn it into a sphere, right?
And when we try to do that,
have a look what happens.
It was a simple circle.
Now, just by brightening a particular area,
and darkening the other area,
what has it become?
A sphere, right?
A three-dimensional shape
from a simple two-dimensional shape.
So we added dimension to it.
Make sense now.
You can even go further,
and add some darkness at the bottom.
Maybe go ahead,
and add some shadows and have a look.
It's a completely different thing.
Let's take a look at the before and after.
So this is what we had before.
This is what we have now.
And the only change that we have made
between these two
is just we have brightened some areas,
and dark in some areas.
That's just it.
And that my friend is dodging,
and burning in a nutshell.
So what did we learn from this my friend?
Whenever we want to add dimension
by dodging and burning,
that is brightening and darkening
certain areas of the image,
always brighten the areas
which face the light,
and darken the areas
which do not face the light.
In this case,
this area faced the light
so we brightened that,
and these areas did not face the light
so we darken that.
And that is how we turned a duty circle
into a sphere.
While working on an actual portrait,
dodging and burning also acts as a tool
to push back
or bring forth a particular area of the image.
Let's say the nose is just coming to forward
towards the camera.
Okay.
If you wanna push it back,
you just have to darken that area.
And let's say you wanna
just bring forth the cheekbones,
you just have to brighten that area.
So you can use dodging and burning
to push back or bring forth certain areas
of the image with reference to the camera.
Let us move on to an actual real-world example.
In this case, have a look.
The skin retouching is done here.
However, the face still looks flat.
We need to add some dimension,
and shape and depth to it.
Well, again there are several ways
to do dodging and burning.
A lot of people like to add
a gray layer during the blend mode to overlay
so that the gray hides,
and just brighten,
and darken certain parts of the image.
Or they can also change the blend mode
to soft light.
That works as well.
Soft light is a little milder.
One of my favorite ways,
I'm gonna show you two ways
how I personally do it.
You can also use the gray layer,
just look it up on the internet.
There's a lot of articles on that,
but what my favorite way
is that adding a simple blank layer,
it just it's so easy to do.
Actually, all you have to do
is to create a new layer,
just a simple blank layer, that's it.
And change the blend mode to soft light.
Okay.
Take the brush.
Take a soft round brush,
decrease the flow to about one or 2%.
Now, I would recommend start with one,
have a little practice,
and then you can go higher.
But to save time,
I'm gonna go with 2%
so that we have a higher intensity,
and we can work faster.
Now keep in mind,
the lower the intensity you will have,
the more precision you can have as a beginner.
All right.
Let's take the brush,
and select that layer,
and you can actually name it
dodging and burning or dodge and burn.
You can take the brush,
make sure the blend mode is soft light.
Make sure the foreground,
and the background colors are black and white.
If there are some other colors here like red,
and certain other color in the background,
will just press D for default.
Now you have black and white.
Now, all we got to do is to zoom in,
and paint accordingly.
Now, how would you paint?
How would you figure out which areas to darken,
and which areas to brighten?
To be very honest,
it's mostly practice,
but you have to keep certain principles in mind.
Number one,
figure out were is the light coming from.
So in this example,
if I show this to you,
and this is just for indication
the light is coming from this side,
as you can clearly see.
So these areas would be dark.
Her nose is protruding,
so this area would be dark.
This area would be dark.
These areas would be bright.
These areas would be brighter.
This area would be dark.
This area would be bright.
So you get the point how this works now?
All right.
The other thing you have to keep in mind,
the areas that you wanna push back
or bring forth, depending upon that,
let's say you wanna push back this area.
All right.
So you would darken that area.
You wanna bring forth the cheekbones here.
So you would wanna brighten that area.
That's how it works.
All right.
I want to push back this particular area
so that we have more head shape there.
It's up to you.
It really comes with practice.
Let's go to the dodge and burn layer, press D.
Make sure that the brush you have selected
is the soft round brush,
set the flow to about one or 2%.
And then let's start painting
with black and white.
So the areas that you wanna darken,
you've paint with black
obvious.
The areas that you wanna brighten,
obviously white.
So let's start with the forehead a little bit.
So we're gonna simply just start painting
with black over there.
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All right.
Now there's also a way
in which you can prevent darkening
unnecessary areas,
which I'm gonna tell you how to do.
For that you have to keep dodge,
and burn layer separate.
So this is what I'm darkening,
certain areas of the image,
darkening the nose area,
darkening above the eyes.
Okay.
And then you can just
maybe just darken this area
to bring the nose up a little bit.
I'm doing a super quick job here my friend,
because I have to show you
some other techniques too.
All right.
Darken up this particular area.
And then,
let's go a little faster.
Let's go five.
Darken up this particular area.
You see how we are handling that?
See we are darkening the shadows a little more
to just bring up the face a little more.
Just the little things here and there,
makes a ton of difference.
It might not look like much now,
but once you look at the before and after,
you would realize this is indeed
a major difference.
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So we have painted too much,
and some of the areas that we are darkening
can get a little over-saturated.
I'm gonna tell you how to deal with that.
But four mild dodging and burning,
this is going to be enough.
So anyway,
so this is the result.
Here's the before.
Here's the after.
You see the change right there?
Isn't that massive?
So this is just for very mild
dodging and burning.
And if you think you have painted
too much like I feel I painted too much here,
if you're using the later versions of Photoshop,
you can hold the tilde key.
Your brush turns into eraser,
and then you can start painting
right over there.
When you release the tilde key,
it gets you back to the brush.
All right.
This only works with
the later versions of Photoshop.
I think 2020 or 2021 and onwards.
All right.
I'm gonna paint here one more time.
Now, if you're just doing basic
dodging and burning,
like if you're quickly editing your image,
you wanna add a little bit of dimension to it,
you can do dodge and burn in the same layer.
That's why I have named here both dodging.
So if you wanna brighten some area, press X.
Now you have a white as the foreground,
and black as the background.
So let's say you wanna brighten this area
a little bit.
You wanna brighten this area a little bit.
I think I went too far.
Anyway.
Maybe the nose here a little bit.
Okay.
Maybe this area a bit.
(upbeat instrumental music)
This particular area.
Just add some shine there.
Smile there.
All right.
Okay.
I feel this is more than enough.
Now what you can also do,
add some highlights here,
and there to make it exciting.
You can add a highlight here.
Sorry.
Not too much.
Add a highlight above the eyes on the eyelids.
Add a highlight there.
So little highlights here and there can help.
Now, know that this was a super quick job.
Keeping that in mind,
let's take a look at the before and after.
So here's the before.
Here's the after.
Just look at it.
Look at the dimension that we have added.
Here's the before.
Here's the after.
Amazing isn't it?
Now you wouldn't have to go that opaque.
You can go a little less,
so you can decrease the opacity,
and slowly and gradually increase it,
and just stop at the point at which you like.
I feel that if I was doing a very quick job,
I would stop right over there at about 50%.
And here's the before.
Here's the after.
You see that little dimension
we added on the face?
So that's one way of doing that.
That's a super quick way of doing that.
You can really spend hours
on dodging and burning.
All right.
So that was method number one.
Now, if you do want a little more control,
I would recommend doing it with curves
because that comes with a mask,
and also allows you to work
with other adjustment layers as well.
But this is my favorite technique too.
I use it mostly,
I must say 70% of the time,
because most of the times
I don't wanna go super advanced.
All right.
The other way is
create a simple curves adjustment layer,
create a point in the middle,
and simply bring it down like this.
Now you can select the mask,
press control or command I.
Simply take the brush.
And this time you just have to keep white
as the foreground color,
unless you wanna erase the effect.
Flow similarly at one, two, three, four, five,
whatever suits with you,
let's keep it at four.
And similarly,
just start painting on the area
that you wanna darken.
Now for this one,
I'm gonna take a little time though.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Now in this case,
as I said, this area looks very plain.
We wanna just create a corner,
and push that area inside.
To do that,
just darken that area as well.
Just a little bit.
(upbeat instrumental music)
You can also work the fingers if you want.
So now we have darken most of the areas.
Let's take a look at the before and after.
So here is the before.
Here's the after.
Massive change.
Let's zoom out and take a look.
Here is the before.
Here is the after.
However, there are several problems with it.
In the process of doing it,
you might also have darken certain areas
which are too bright to dark,
and this can be used as a cheat sheet,
whatever I'm about to show you.
So if you have gotten professional with it,
if you have lots of years of practice.
Lots of years is not required,
I'm just exaggerating.
If you have enough practice with it,
you don't have to worry about this,
but if you're new to this,
or if you wanna be quick about it,
and if you don't wanna work hard too much,
use this cheat sheet.
It is just a way in which
that you would remove the areas
that you have darkened from the bright areas.
Okay.
Does that make sense?
It would just remove the darkening
that you have done from the bright areas.
Okay.
To do that,
double-click on the right-hand-side
of the blend,
as you have already guessed it,
this is gonna be blended.
Just take this away
or hide it from the bright areas
of the underlying layer
or the layer that is lying under it.
To do that,
take the right most slider,
and slowly and gradually bring it to the left.
And as you do that,
it goes away from the bright areas.
But this is too harsh, right?
So hold the alt key
or the option key,
click on the slider to break it apart,
and take it all the way apart like this.
This is just a cool trick to go subtle with it.
Hit okay.
Let's take a look at the before and after,
and look at the improvement.
Here's the before.
We had accidentally darken some areas.
Here's the after.
It just mild that down.
It was not an accident actually.
If you totally wanna do manual work,
and you totally want to sculpt the face,
and you wanna figure out,
all right.
This area needs to be pushed down,
and this area needs to be brighten up.
Then I would not recommend this.
This is just to number one,
make the effect not as strong.
Number two,
if you are a beginner,
this will help you
so that you don't accidentally paint on
the bright areas.
But as you progress,
I would recommend not to use this.
All right.
Now here's another problem with this.
The areas that we have darkened,
they have gone a little more saturated.
So how do we make it less saturated?
Or if you feel that the areas
that we have darkened
have gone a little more red,
how do we go about that?
Well, this is curves my friend.
If you wanna reduce the reds,
just go to the red channel and just reduce it.
See if that works out for you.
In this case, it doesn't work much.
So we're gonna take the help of few saturation.
So click on the adjustment layer icon,
and then choose hue, saturation.
And we want to limit your saturation
just to the curves mask right here.
So single-click on this button,
this creates a clipping mask.
Now we can control the saturation.
If you take it all the way to the left,
the dark areas become absolutely de-saturated.
We don't have to do that.
Let's go a little subtle here.
Let's go for minus 14.
Now have a look.
Without hue, saturation,
they were just too saturated.
Have a look.
Here's the before.
Here's the after.
Did you see that?
Look at this area?
Here's the before.
It's so red, can be very saturated
in these areas as well.
Here's the after.
You see the excess red is now gone.
If you wanna go even further here,
you can do that.
You can just go choose the reds from the top,
and just make sure
that the red areas are selected.
You can just play with the range
to just expand it,
and make sure all of the reds,
and the yellows and everything
that you wanted is selected.
And then let's set the saturation,
and hue back to zero,
and then again, play with the hue.
See what works for you.
Sometimes nudging the hue helps,
or you can also play with the saturation,
and just take away the reds.
All right.
That helps a lot.
So I'm gonna take the red way actually
to minus 22,
and set the master saturation to zero.
It's a little more natural in my opinion.
Now similarly,
to brighten the areas,
you would create another curves adjustment layer.
So this was for burning.
Let's create a dodge layer.
So create a curves adjustment layer.
And this time we would take it up like this,
and select a mask, press control or command I,
and just start painting on the areas
that you would like to brighten.
I'm gonna take it even more up.
Take the brush, white as the foreground color,
make sure the flow is low and start painting.
So this is one area
I would love to highlight.
Here's some other area.
Just add some shine to the eyelids,
and maybe you wanna work on the nose,
add some simple highlight to the cheekbones.
I'm just doing general adjustments here.
Now keep in mind,
there's also a technique in dodging and burning,
where you just use dodging and burning
to even on the skin tones.
And you would do that if you were creating
a magazine cover.
Just like for example,
you see this one batch that is dark,
you would decrease the flow very low
to like one or 2%,
and then just brighten,
just that particular area to fix that
to even that out,
that's a different thing,
that is not adding dimension.
All right.
We sure have added some highlights.
You can do the same with the fingers.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Simple highlights here and there.
I would increase the flow to about 4%
just to go a little faster.
(upbeat instrumental music)
See the little patches
I removed for dodging and burning?
That is just me evening out skin tones
with dodging and burning.
Also that's another application.
Anyway, so that's it.
I wouldn't do more.
Here's the before.
Here's the after.
See that?
See how we just even that area out before after?
So now once you have done that,
we humans have a tendency to go overboard.
We always do extra.
Let me share with you what I mean.
So here's the before.
Here's the after.
Just look at the massive difference.
Before flat face,
after tons and tons of dimension.
But then again, this can be too much dimension.
It might seem like she's a 3D model.
So we have to dim it down.
So whatever dodging and burning
that you have done,
let's name it dodge.
Select the first layer,
hold the shift key,
select the bottommost layer.
And by the way,
you can also alter the color of dodge
with hue, saturation,
just as we did with the burn layer.
Press control or command G to group it up,
and you can name it, dodging and burning.
Now it's a group.
Burning is separate, dodging is separate.
You know what is the advantage of this?
Now of course you can select a group,
and decrease the opacity, dial it down,
but maybe you don't
wanna dial down the dodging.
Maybe you wanna dial down just the burning.
So you have the independence
to just select the burning layer,
and dial it down.
So I wanna dial it down just a little bit,
not too much,
probably at about 50%.
And here's the dodging,
the dodging is pretty good.
I wanna keep it the way it is.
So there you go.
Here's the before.
Here's the after.
Just a little dodging and burning
adds so much dimension to the face or portrait,
whatever you wanna call it.
And you can actually apply dodging,
and burning all over the body
or with anything just like we applied
to the two-dimensional circle.
Just a couple of last points to keep in mind,
and do a quick little re-cap.
Whenever you're adding dimension
using dodging and burning,
brighten the areas which face the light,
darken the areas
which are not facing the light.
Brighten the areas that you wanna bring forth
towards the camera,
and darken the areas that you wanna push back
away from the camera.
That's all there is to it.
And you can use any technique
you want to brighten
or darken the areas.
That's up to you.
Your choice.
I have taught you lots of different tools
to do that,
not just in this lesson,
but in previous lessons as well.
Just open up your imagination.
Just experiment.
Do what you feel is right.
Just understand the concepts
of dodging and burning.
I hope this lesson helped.
I'll see you in the next one.
Till then,
stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating.