While we’ve been talking about the Dodge and Burn Tools in Photoshop, what hasn’t been said is both of these tools use what is called a destructive technique. That means you should have made a copy of your original image before working on it because the Dodge and Burn Tools will change the pixel information permanently. The only way to undo any changes is to back up using the history while making your edits. (In Photoshop, Ctrl + Alt + Z will back up through history one step at a time).
If you’re making just a few changes, this may work for you however, there are those who prefer to always use a non-destructive edit technique using layers.
There are a few different methods available for non-destructive dodge and burn, but by far the easiest in my mind is painting with soft light.
To use this method, create a blank layer and set the blend mode to soft light and then set the fill to 50% gray. If you’re using Adobe Photoshop Elements 7, this can be done in one step by going to the menu bar and selecting Layer => New => Layer… and on the dialog box that opens, change the Mode drop down box to Soft Light and then tick the check-box to Fill with Soft-Light-neutral color (50% gray).
Now you’re ready to make your dodge and burn corrections. Set your brush color to black and set the opacity of the brush to 20-25% . This will act like the burn tool when using it, darkening the areas in the image where you apply brush strokes.
To dodge, set your brush color to white, leave the opacity of the brush the same (20-25%) and apply strokes to the areas of the image where you want to bring up the highlights.
The beauty of using this method is you can get a quick comparison of your correction work by turning the visibility of the gray layer off and on.
Now, go dodge and burn those photos you know need some work.
Soft light adjustment layer turned off
Soft light adjustment layer turned on
