How to quickly use Dodge and Burn in 3 easy steps!

Report · Jun 17, 2020

Portrait editing: Use Dodge and Burn in Lightroom Classic

What are Dodge and Burn?

Dodge and Burn simply mean to lighten and darken certain areas of your photo, respectively.

Why are they important?

When you lighten an area, you bring more focus to that part of the photo. When you darken an area, you take focus away from it. For example, you can brighten or illuminate a person's face (Dodge) and darken parts of the background (Burn) which will make the subject stand out.

Let's apply Dodge and Burn to a portrait. Here's how the unedited portrait looks

❶ Select a local adjustment tool

In the top panel, select Develop.

Select one of the following tools: Graduated Filter, Radial Filter, or Adjustment Brush.
These tools help you make edits to specific areas in your portrait.

For now, let's use Adjustment Brush. Click the last tool in the highlighted panel or press K. For details on how to work with Graduated Filter and Radial Filter, see Use Graduated and Radial Filter.
You can adjust the size of the Adjustment Brush in the Size slider.

❷ Lighten an area (Dodge)

Make the selection where you want to brighten or illuminate the photo. Let's select the face here.
Click Erase and use the brush to clean up around the edges of the face to make the selection more precise.

The mask showing the selection made.

Move the Exposure slider slightly to the right. You can also move the Temp slider slightly to the right to make the face a bit warmer.

❸ Darken an area (Burn)

In the Adjustment Brush panel, click New to create another mask.

Make a selection in the background.

The mask showing the selection made.

Move the Exposure slider to the left to darken the selection. Let's also move the Highlights slider to the left to further remove any bright areas in the selection. Click Done.

And, that's it! Here's how the final portrait looks:

Let us know in the comments what you think about this workflow!

Related links:

Edit photo areas with the Adjustment Brush

Click the link below to see the previous post or go back to Overview.

< Apply Radial and Linear Gradient - Overview >

Report · Jul 06, 2020

Thank you, very clear for a newbie like me.