- Whether you're retouching in Photoshop or in Lightroom,
the concept of Dodge and Burn is the same.
It's the act of creating the illusion
of depth in your images,
and we do it by brightening some areas
and darkening other areas.
You can do it at a detail level,
which I call Micro Dodge and Burn,
or you can do it more broadly,
as a general Macro Dodge and Burn.
Those are the two different ways I like to explain it,
but let me show you a little bit about how we Dodge and Burn
to create the illusion of depth in our images.
So when it comes to Dodge and Burn
what we want to do is we want to try
and brighten some of the brighter areas
on the face that are already innate in our image,
but we want to brighten them to accentuate
the three dimensional formality of the face.
And then, there's also Macro versus Micro Dodge and Burn,
which I will explain in just a moment.
First, what we need to do is create a brush
that's going to allow us to dodge or brighten certain areas.
So in order to do that, hit K on your keyboard,
it'll make a new mask,
and it'll also activate your brush tool.
The next thing we want to do is just basically brighten,
quite significantly, our exposure slider.
And then, because we are going quite extreme
for the brightening effect,
we want to protect ourselves against going too crazy,
and we're going to significant throttle the speed
at which this brightening effect gets applied to our image.
So now that we have that,
we want the feather all the way up,
let's make our brush a little bit bigger,
and I'm going to start brightening
certain areas that I know are already bright,
and I'm going to start painting into those areas,
just to brighten up and make the cheek
just look a little bit more three dimensional in form.
I'm coming over the nose,
and just accentuating that highlight, right along the nose.
And now, what is the difference
between Macro Dodge and Burn and Micro Dodge and Burn?
So when I talk about Micro Dodge and Burn,
you can easily get rid of
skin color inconsistencies using this technique.
And so what I'm doing is,
I'm finding the darker skin inconsistencies,
maybe a little bit this area here,
and I'm starting to just brighten them slightly
using my brightening brush or my dodging brush.
Now, this technique literally dates back to the darkroom.
That's how old Dodge and Burn is.
And I will say that Ansel Adams was a big proponent
of Dodge and Burn in his artwork as well.
So let's be honest,
learning Dodge and Burn is part of learning
how to be a photographer.
You can also even come into here into these eye whites.
We've got a little area of darker color.
We can go ahead and paint that in,
and remove those little inconsistencies.
So Dodge and Burn, not only can be used on skin,
but it can also be used on features.
So that's Micro Dodge and Burn.
Do we ever have to actually get that small?
Probably not, unless you're doing something
really, really high end,
and you really want to make it look great.
So let's go ahead.
We are going to turn our Dodge and Burn layer on and off,
and you can see just a little bit,
the difference between Macro Dodge and Burn,
which was done here on the cheek and the nose,
just accentuating that brightened area.
Let me just add a little bit
of brightening here to the forehead,
where that hotspot is on the forehead.
Again, just trying to make this face look
more three-dimensional than it currently does.
And we'll just accentuate the highlight also on the chin,
and then let's preview what did we do.
Okay. Before and after. It's very easy.
Like I said, to go a little bit too far,
so I would take my flow down even further,
or I can also just modify the overall exposure slider,
which is going to make a more realistic effect on those areas.
In the next chapter,
I am going to talk a little bit more
about dodging certain areas,
and we will continue from there.