How to dodge and burn a photo in Paint by Zaweba
Dodge and burn in Paint by Zaweba with the Dodge and Burn tools, set by range and exposure, or with a luminosity mask and a Curves layer.
Dodging and burning is done in Paint by Zaweba either with the Dodge and Burn tools, which lighten or darken where you paint with a range and an exposure setting, or more flexibly with a luminosity mask and a Curves adjustment layer. Dodge brightens, burn darkens, and both are the darkroom way of guiding the eye by shaping light across a picture.
In a darkroom, printers held back light from parts of the print to keep them lighter, and gave extra light to others to darken them. The idea is the same digitally: brighten what you want people to look at, darken what distracts.
Using the Dodge and Burn tools
Pick Dodge or Burn and set the range: shadows, midtones or highlights. That limits the effect to that band of tones, so burning the highlights darkens a bright sky without turning the trees in the foreground black. Exposure sets how strong each stroke is; keep it low, around a few percent to start, and build up with several strokes. Protect tones helps keep colours from shifting as you work.
Paint with a soft brush, larger than you think. Big, gentle strokes look natural; small hard ones leave visible patches.
Work on a duplicate of the layer so you can lower its opacity or start again. Note that these tools aren't available at 32-bit, so use a 16-bit or 8-bit document.
The Sponge tool sits beside them and desaturates or saturates where you paint, with flow and vibrance, which helps tone down a bright jacket that pulls the eye.
A non-destructive way with luminosity masks
Select > Luminosity Masks makes soft selections of the Lights, Darks or Midtones of the picture, at levels 1 to 4 that narrow the range. With a selection of the Darks active, add a Curves adjustment layer and lift the curve; the shadows open up gently, and the change follows brightness so it blends without hard edges. Do the same with Lights and pull the curve down to tame highlights.
Because it's an adjustment layer with a mask, you can paint on the mask to limit it to one area, change the curve later, or turn it off. Luminosity Mask, the fuller version, adds strength 5, a live preview and the choice of the active layer as the source, and works at 8, 16 and 32 bits.
Where to dodge and where to burn
On portraits, dodge the catchlights in the eyes a little, the bridge of the nose and the top of the cheekbones, and burn the edges of the face and the background. On landscapes, darken the corners and a bright sky edge, and lift the subject. Follow the light that's already in the scene; dodging the shadow side of a face makes it look flat.
Mistakes to avoid with dodging and burning
Overdoing it is the main one. Turn the layer off and on now and then. If the change jumps out, it's too strong. Halos are the other: a bright glow around a dark edge comes from dodging over the edge with a big brush. Use a smaller brush near edges, or a luminosity mask, which follows the tones for you.
Paint by Zaweba is free software for Windows that works offline, and both approaches are part of the standard tools.
