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.
Retouchers beware! Photoshop 2019 breaks color blending mode
If you are a retoucher and have not already upgraded to Photoshop 2019, just don’t! at least until the following bug is fixed.
It seems like the latest Photoshop update to Photoshop CC 2019 broke some layer blending modes or at least the Color blending mode.
Fixing discolouration during the dodge & burn retouch
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.
A fast way to dodge & burn in Photoshop
Dodging and burning has become as commonplace to Photoshop as it was in the darkroom with film. But in Photoshop it can be a tedious process (even more so than it was in the darkroom). This quick technique from Anti Karppinen shows a very fast way to achieve a similar result in Photoshop.
How to create flawlessly retouched skin with dodge & burn
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!
A guide on how to approach dodge and burn, what are you trying to fix?
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!
This is how to get the painterly look in your portraits
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.
How To Create A Dodge And Burn Photo Signature
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) .
Dodge & Burn – With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
If you split an image into its most basic components, you can look at each pixel as the sum of the following info:
- Brightness
- Color Tone
- Saturation
If we look at a black and white photo for example, one only element present in the photo is brightness. So any three-dimensionality is determined exclusively by the (relative) brightness of neighboring pixels. Our brain is trained to “think” that bright pixels are located closer to us, while dark pixels are more likely to be further away.
Retouching Essentials: Are You Having Color Issues When Dodging & Burning? This Might Be The Reason
Many of the tools inside of Photoshop use various color models and techniques to alter color. If you are not familiar with them you might be creating a lot of trouble for yourself.
A lot of retouching tutorials online will teach you to use a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with -100 saturation to remove the color information from an image (this should eliminate color distractions when Dodging and burning). If you are following this advice, then you are working with Lightness in the HSL color model, which is very different from how our eyes perceive color…
Here is a quick example why it is a bad idea:
