Dodge and Burn for everything... not just shadows and highlights

Aaron Bernard

Is there a tricky way to do an overall dodge or burn. Here is the deal:

Lets say I have a dark area in the shot. If I use Levels I can crank it up and see the detail is in the dark area of the photo.

What Id love to do is come in and dodge that area overall to brighten it up and bring out the detail. However when I get in there with the dodge tool Im working with just shadows or just highlights and the results look odd. Like it all turns to grey as opposed to well dodging it.

Attached are two samples. Ive just cranked the levels way up to get a look at the black area. As you can see there is detail in there. Thats what I want to get out.

Any ideas or tricks?



Original Photo:

After level Adjust:

photobug

Levels Adjustment Layer + Mask, no Dodge/Burn
Fastscan,

I'd suggest making a duplicate layer (control-J) to become the "foreground" (Photoshop will by default name it "Background copy", but you can rename it Foreground).

Apply Levels (or Shadow/Highlights?) to that layer to bring out the detail you want in the foreground -- ignoring how the water & susnet look in the background.

Then create a Layer Mask for the Foreground layer. Either fill it with Black, then paint the foreground area White (so that the Foreground shows) ... or fill it with White and paint the background area Black. (there are fancier/more accurate ways to create a mask for this layer, but that's the basic, straightforward method)

You can then also tweak the Opacity of the Foreground layer a bit, if you like.



A slightly better alternative -- create a Levels Adjustment Layer, then build the same mask as above (white for foreground area, black for background) for that Adjustment Layer.


There are probably 20 other ways to handle it, too...

_________________
p.s. -- Photoshop's Dodge and Burn tools are horribly coarse tools, esp on color images; Katrin Eismann (author of "Photoshop Masking & Compositing", the "bible" on the topic) recommends never using Dodge or Burn at all, except when editing layer masks (which are grayscale)

colourbox

Trick #1 is to avoid the old Dodge/Burn tools except as a last resort because all other methods (using Levels/Curves and Masks, or blend modes like Screen) give better results.

Trick #2, if you are using Photoshop CS2, is to use the Image - Adjustments - Shadow/Highlight command, because it is an overall dodge/burn command with a lot of intelligence built into it.

photobug

Shadow/Highlight -- as adjustment layer? sigh...

colourbox wrote:

Trick #2, ... is to use the Image - Adjustments - Shadow/Highlight command

(going off on a tangent...) I sure wish PS CS2 had Shadow/Highlights available as an Adjustment Layer instead of a "pixel-destructive" adjustment! (Maybe in CS3? ;-) )

pathfinder

While there are a number of ways to adjust the contrast ratios in an image - overlay blending I use a lot, Shadow/Highlight, dodge and burn on a layer, curves on the Lightness layer in LAB, the fact is that the foreground in this image is way underexposed and probably is not correctable in any manner.

If this was shot in RAW, you might try to make two conversions - one for highlights and one for shadows then blend the two images in layers. Otherwise I am not optimistic here.

The contrast ratios between the suns reflection and the shadowed forground are just too high to capture in one exposure. Three seperate exposures on a tripod, and merging in HDR might have a chance.

colourbox

photobug wrote:

(going off on a tangent...) I sure wish PS CS2 had Shadow/Highlights available as an Adjustment Layer instead of a "pixel-destructive" adjustment! (Maybe in CS3? ;-) )

Somewhere deep in the Adobe user forums an engineer explained why it isn't an adjustment layer right now. What I remember is that a pixel on an adjustment layer acts on a pixel under it. Shadow/Highlight doesn't work that way. It does calculations on the brightness of neighboring pixels on the same layer, too. As an adjustment layer, the number of calculations required to redraw when you change something could cause painfully long redraw. Again, that's my paraphrase, not the official explanation. Maybe we will get it as machines get faster. That's how all the other new features became practical enough to implement.

I think Aperture has nondestructive shadow/highlight, so it should be possible, but I haven't actually used that software. Also, Aperture doesn't have to worry about a user creating a stack of layers 20 deep to recalculate. Maybe that's why they can get away with it.

edgework

pathfinder wrote:

While there are a number of ways to adjust the contrast ratios in an image - overlay blending I use a lot, Shadow/Highlight, dodge and burn on a layer, curves on the Lightness layer in LAB, the fact is that the foreground in this image is way underexposed and probably is not correctable in any manner.

I agree. The deepest shadows totally break up when any effort is made to bring out detail.

Still, a few applications of Shadow/Highlight to a duped layer, and a layer mask to control the illumination give a result better than the original.

jfriend

Curve adjustment layer + mask

FastScan wrote:

Is there a tricky way to do an overall dodge or burn.

This is a variation of other things that have been suggested to you. I create a curve adjustment layer. Then, manipulate the curve (in your case raising the shadows) until you can see the detail you want in the shadows. Sometimes you have to move your curve fairly extreme. Ignore what happens to the non-shadow part of the image at this point.

Then, depending upon the shape of the dark area, I either paint on the mask with a soft-edged large radius black brush or I fill the mask with black and paint on it with a soft-edged large radius white brush to isolate the effect to only certain areas of the image.

If you want a nice soft edge to your mask, you can use a soft-edged brush, a large brush diameter and an opacity in the 30-50% range. Use multiple strokes to build up the effect in certain areas. Because no two brush strokes of yours will follow exactly the same path, you get a more gradual edge on your mask by building up the effect with multiple strokes with a partial opacity.

Here's a version I did that way:

Aaron Bernard

Thanks for all the great ideas here! I'll get at it and see how I go.

Aard

There is a good Dodge&Burn alternative in the actions from http://www.1clickactions.com. It seems to avoid the gray effect that you get from Photoshop's tools. Run the action and then paint over in white to dodge and black to burn. Personally I find it easier than making selections and so on and gives a natural effect.
Also you can vary the effect by altering the opacity level for more localised effects.

dandb.jpg