Dodge and Burn

Enhance your photos and improve contrast by controlling the light and intensity of color in select areas. Dodge, burn, saturate and desaturate your photos to accentuate and define shapes, magnify and fade color, and add shadows and highlights.

You can use the Dodge and Burn tool to lighten or darken areas in a photo without affecting other areas. The tool is often used to lighten underexposed areas or darken overexposed areas.

You can save your settings as a preset for future use.

Dodging and Burning Parts of an Image

To Lighten or Darken Areas of a Photo:

  1. In Edit mode, in the Exposure/Lighting group, select the Dodge tool to lighten areas, or the Burn tool to darken areas.

    2. You can also access the Dodge and Burn tool from the Filter drop-down menu or Filter toolbar.

  2. Under Tool Settings, select the area to adjust: Shadows, Midtones, or Highlights.
  3. Drag the range slider to fine-tune targeted areas within the shadows or highlights. Increasing the range broadens the affected range of tones, while decreasing the range narrows the affected range of tones.

  4. Under Brush settings select from the following preference settings:

    • Drag the Nib Width slider to select a brush size.
    • Drag the Feathering slider to soften the edges of your strokes.
    • Drag the Strength slider to adjust the intensity of your strokes.
  5. Draw over the areas of the image you want to lighten or darken.

  6. Click Done.

When you adjust the range slider, a preview of the areas of the image that will be affected by brushing will be shown as a grayscale image. The brighter the pixels are in the preview image, the more they will be affected by brush strokes. Areas that are pure white will be affected with full strength, and areas that are black will be completely unaffected. For best results, move the range slider until the pixels you want to dodge or burn are white, and areas that you want to leave unaffected are black.

Scroll with your mouse to adjust the brush size as you work, or use Shift + mouse scroll to adjust feathering.

Drawing Straight Lines:

Hold the Shift key while using Dodge and Burn to draw horizontal or vertical lines. For example, holding Shift, then clicking and dragging horizontally will lock the cursor into horizontal only so long as shift is being held. Release Shift to return to free hand brushing. You can even release Shift to return to free hand brushing, then press it again while still drawing the same line to unlock and re-lock the brush at will.

Drawing Diagonal Lines:

Using the Dodge and Burn, you can create straight diagonal lines by placing two points on the image. Place the cursor where you want the line to begin, press and hold Shift, then Left-Click on the image to create a point. Let go of Shift, and move the brush to where the line will end, press and hold Shift, then Left-Click again to create a second point. A straight line will fill in between these two points.

To Saturate or Desaturate Areas of a Photo:

  1. Select the Saturate tool to intensify colors, or the Desaturate tool to fade colors.

  2. Under Tool Settings, select one of the following:

    1. Standard to target all areas of the photo.
    1. Vibrance to target the less saturated colors and to prevent skin tones from becoming over-saturated.
  3. Under Brush settings select from the following preference settings:
    • Drag the Nib Width slider to select a brush size.
    • Drag the Feathering slider to soften the edges of your strokes
    • Drag the Strength slider to adjust the intensity of your strokes
  4. Draw over the areas of the image you want to lighten or darken.
  5. Click Done.

You can right-click a slider to reset to the default value.

See also: