Adobe Photoshop CS3 Dodge and Burn Tutorial

This tutorial will go over too underused programs by Adobe Photoshop CS3. These two tools are the Dodge tool and Burn tool. These tools have the unique characteristic of lightening or darkening an area in an image. This comes into handy when you have pictures that may be too dark in some areas to see what is going on or to bright to see things. I have used a picture with a mixture of dark and light areas that could use some fabrication. This tool has been around for quite some time, but is very useful none the less. Let's continue with the tutorial so we can see just how this affects the image.

First open up Adobe Photoshop CS3 and select an image that you want to lighten or darken. now select the Dodge tool as shown in the diagram below.

Now select an area that you want to lighten.

Now click once or twice and check the changes this makes to an area on image. You can change the amount it changes per click by going to the top and changing the Exposure percentage. You can also change the brush size up there if you want to do a bigger or smaller area at a time.

Now select the Burn tool from the menu on the left.

Now you can see the tool image on the left.

Now select the lightened area that we just changed.

Now click a couple times and look at the output. It looks almost like it did when we started. It will probably never go back to the same way it was though. We can always try to get close though.

Now if you click a few more times you make that little house in the background behind the photographer almost disappear. I can see this being used when something revealing is showing in a reflection in a picture. This is how they would try to make it unviewable.

I hope that this tutorial has taught you how to effectively use the Dodge tool and the Burn tool. I am sure that you will find more useful things to do with it, but this is a nice example of it being used on an image in real life. Whatever image you choose to change make sure you take your time and display some effort in your work. It will go a long way in creating your masterpiece.

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