Photoshop Elements 4: The Missing Manual

Dodging and Burning

Like the Unsharp Mask, dodging and burning are old darkroom techniques to enhance photos and emphasize particular areas. Dodging lightens shadows and brings out the details hidden in them, and burning darkens highlights, bringing out their details. Both tools live with the Sponge tool in the Toolbox, so you may have run into them while you were using the Sponge.

You may think that since you have the Shadows/Highlights command, you don't have any need for these tools. But they still serve a useful purpose, because they let you make selective changes, rather than affecting the entire image the way Shadows/Highlights does. Figure 11-12 gives an example of when you might need to work on a particular area. Of course, you can also make a selection (see Chapter 5) and then use Shadows/Highlights just on that area, which is another technique that you may want to try as well as dodging and burning.

Skillful use of dodging and burning can greatly enhance the effectiveness of your photo, although it helps to have an artistic eye to spot what you want to emphasize and what you want to downplay.

Both the Dodge and Burn tools are really just variants of the Brush tool, except that they don't apply color directly—they just affect the colors that are already present in your photo. Adobe refers to these two as the "toning tools."

Figure 11-12. Although the overall shadow/highlight ...