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How to dodge and burn in-camera to preserve highlights and save time in post

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Graduated ND filters will help you get perfect exposure in-camera when shooting landscapes and cityscapes. However, the area they cover sometimes just won’t cut it for the scene you’re trying to capture. Of course, you can sometimes fix it in post, but why not try getting it right in-camera?

In this video, Karl Taylor demonstrates a simple but effective technique of dodging and burning in-camera, relying on the old darkroom method. It will help you nail the exposure, preserve details in highlights, and it could save you some post-processing time.

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How to properly dodge and burn your way to stunning landscape photos

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Dodging and burning is often a technique we really only see mentioned when it comes to portraits. And it’s no surprise, really. It can be a great way to even out skin tones and texture. But it’s been a powerful technique when it comes to landscapes for a very long time. Ansel used it in the darkroom and many landscape photographers use it today in Photoshop.

In this 17-minute video, photographer Michael Shainblum shows us a couple of different techniques for dodging and burning landscape photos within Photoshop to add impact and really bring out the important bits you want to highlight.

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Five ways to bump local exposure without dodging

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Dodging is a good way to draw attention to the subject in your image. However, it comes with certain drawbacks, and sometimes alternative methods are a better solution. In this video, Jonathan Lee Martin gives you five alternatives to dodging that will make your subject pop without harming your image.

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Fixing discolouration during the dodge & burn retouch

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This will thankfully be a quick little technique on how to fix an issue that can be incredibly infuriating. This discolouration issue I’m referring to arrises when you’re using the dodge and burn retouching technique and the frustrating part is that it only presents itself once you’ve finished doing all the retouching.

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How to create flawlessly retouched skin with dodge & burn

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Retouching skin with dodge and burn is one of the most valuable skill a photographer can learn. It can have such a dramatic effect on your image, but it does it completely non-destructively. While dodging and burning has been around since the darkroom days, the precision of a digital workflow gives us so much more control. It’s an incredibly powerful tool.

In this video, photographer and retoucher Zoë Noble talks us through her process. You’ll want to clean up the skin first to remove major blemishes, which Zoë also covers in this video. But then, let the dodging and burning commence!

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A guide on how to approach dodge and burn, what are you trying to fix?

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Dodging and Burning images is something that I see every day in photography and it seems to have two purposes: Artistic character and removing luminosity based distractions.

Today I’m going to be talking about the latter, removing luminosity based distractions. I’m going to assume you already know how to do dodge and burn (and if not you should check this tutorial), so we’ll skip the baby steps and jump straight ahead to the point of the article!

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This is how to get the painterly look in your portraits

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I recently organised and executed a cover shoot for Uk alternative magazine Twisted Edge. It features the usual alternative lifestyle elements such as girls with tattoos, rock bands, movie reviews and various Uk alt photographers. Having read many alt magazines, I knew I wanted the images for this feature to stand out, and buck the raw, gritty aesthetic that has become synonomus with Uk alt photography.

Taking inspiration from one of my favourite non photographer artists, Dan dos Santos, I planned to do some hyper-real, stylised portraits. The models would look like they just stepped out of a graphic novel or computer game.

To achieve this painterly style, you have to mix a few different techniques together. There isn’t one global technique, apart from maybe some dodgy oil painting filter (Which I advise you not to use……ever…ever), that can create this look. It is a mix of doge and burn, painting in colour, and choosing the right colours. Not only that, it also depends on your subject, costume and the overall tone of the image. What I will do today is focus on the dodge and burn, which is the key element…..but also mention the other factors around it, to put it into context. I will also leave you a speed edit above from the same set, to show you the full editing process from beginning to end.

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How To Create A Dodge And Burn Photo Signature

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If you want to understand how a photo was worked on, one great way it to generate a Dodge & Burn mask (or a D&B signature). You can then use this signature to learn quite a bit about the dodge and burn that was done on a photo. You get a better “feel” for the brush strokes. To have a better distinction between the dodge and the burn, you can colorize each mask. This is what it looks like:

Since this is such a powerful tool for showing how you worked your photo, we are going to share the process of creating one. (and you can do similar for healing brush for example) .

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