Dodge, Burn and Sponge in Paint by Zaweba

Darkroom printers used to wave bits of card and their hands under the enlarger, holding back light from some areas and giving others more, to guide the eye around a print. Dodge and Burn are the digital version, and the Sponge adds control over colour intensity. In Paint by Zaweba all three are brushes that change the pixels you paint over.

Dodge and Burn

Dodge lightens and Burn darkens. Both have three settings that make them far more controllable than painting with white or black at low opacity.

Range picks which tones the tool affects: shadows, midtones or highlights. Burning highlights deepens bright areas such as a sky without touching the dark trees below. Dodging shadows lifts detail out of a dark coat without washing out the face above it. Midtones, the default for most work, affects the middle of the tonal range.

Exposure sets how strong each stroke is. Keep it low, a small percentage, and build up the effect with several passes. Heavy exposure makes blotchy patches that are hard to blend.

Protect tones keeps the colour from shifting as you lighten or darken. Without it, dodging can wash colours towards grey and burning can push them muddy or oversaturated. Leave it on for most photographic work.

Sponge

The Sponge changes saturation rather than brightness. It can desaturate, pulling colour out of an area, or saturate, making colour richer. Flow controls how quickly the change builds up as you paint.

The vibrance option makes saturating gentler on colours that are already strong, and it helps protect skin tones from going orange. Use it when you boost colour in a portrait background or clothing.

Desaturating is useful for calming distracting colour: a bright red sign behind a subject, a coloured cast on a white shirt from a nearby wall, or red patches on skin.

Jobs they do well

Shaping light on a face. Dodge the highlights on the cheekbones, nose and forehead a touch; burn the shadows under the cheekbones and along the jaw. It adds depth that flat lighting took away.

Leading the eye. Burn the edges and corners of a landscape slightly to keep attention in the middle, and dodge the main subject a little.

Bringing out eyes. Dodge the iris gently, and use the Sponge to saturate the colour there a touch.

Rescuing detail. Burn highlights in a bright sky to bring back cloud detail, or dodge shadows to show texture in dark clothing.

Working without damage

These tools change pixels directly, so work on a duplicate layer. Then you can lower its opacity if the effect is too strong, or delete it and start again.

Many retouchers prefer a non-destructive method: a new layer filled with 50 percent grey in Overlay or Soft Light mode, painted with a soft white or black brush at low opacity. That keeps every stroke editable. Dodge and Burn are still quicker for small, direct touches, and their range and protect tones settings are hard to imitate with a plain brush.

A limit to know

Dodge, Burn and Sponge are not available on 32-bit documents. If you are working at that depth, use adjustment layers with masks, or convert to 16-bit for the hand-finishing stage.

Subtle is the word to remember. The best dodging and burning is the kind nobody notices; the picture just looks better lit. Zoom out often, switch the layer off and on to compare, and stop a little before you think you should. Used like that, these three brushes in Paint by Zaweba give your photos the finish a careful printer would once have given them.