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Participant
July 5, 2024
Open for Voting

Add sampled color to the burn tool, but still limit to shadow, midtones or highlights for pt or fill

  • July 5, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 213 views

Just as stated in the title, I've been using PS since 3.0. I taught it in college for twenty-five years and I'm still waiting for this feature. I know you can do this. Frequently, I want to burn in just shadows, midtones or highlights, but being confined to black, or gray looks very unnatural. It would be so nice to sample the color in the area and use that color combined with gray to burn in just the shadows, midtones, or highlights. If there's a simple workaround already in PS, please let me know.

2 replies

Derek Cross
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 5, 2024

Try this – create a new Layer over your image and fill it with 50% grey (Edit > Fill)

then give it a blending mode of Overlay.You can then use the Dodge tool on that layer to lighten any areas of the original image and the Burn tool to darken any parts you want darkened, all non-destructively.

Legend
July 5, 2024

The command would be Burn to Color. You can always burn in and then paint over the area with a brush set to Color blend mode.