hi guys welcome and welcome back thanks so much for joining me today we're going to go ahead
and look at a professional tip on how to make your images pop far more than they already do
so like i've just said basically today we're gonna look at a pro technique uh it's one
of the many ways to do a dodge and burn and we're gonna walk through what the heck that is
why you should use one and why it will level up your images tenfold so uh yeah let's get into it
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on a Friday at 12 noon the reason for this video basically is because in my previous video which
i did when i was really feeling woo-woo is because i mentioned that one image would be
better with a bit of dodge and burn probably a little bit more of the old dodge and burn
contour going on up in there so like i said in that clip this image would be improved tenfold
if the image had a little bit more in terms of the depth and the punch and the grit and and just
basically some edge that would come through and so that's what we're going to look at today we're
going to use this image of Arthur that we've got up on the screen Arthur was photographed last week
was it last week i don't even know i've got no idea what day it is at this stage
and um this has been edited so we're going to do the steps to get from here that we can see
to here so that's the after and those little bits will elevate an image from something that
looks just like a normal photograph to something that looks oh so much more if you're doing studio
photography if you're doing human photography if you're doing animal photography if you're doing
any kind of photography including landscapes then this technique is going to work for you so i'm
going to utilise the technique that previously was discussed in full edits on the youtube channel we
don't have full edits on the YouTube channel now in fact them and all of the other ones since are
all inside of our premium membership over on the website so full edits are living there right now
i think there's like 18 19 20 ish and we do a live zoom full edit every three months as
well which people really enjoy taking part in in that we did utilise a slightly different technique
for dodge and burn which is what i use personally now within my workflows but this technique is a
really good one to get you started so how do we do it and what do we do and what the heck is it let's
start with the last one first and go with what is dodge and burn so dodge and burn is essentially
a technique that you apply to your photographs in any editing software it doesn't have to just be
photoshop and what it does is it lightens certain areas and it darkens other areas when we use the
term dodge we mean lighten when we use the term burn we mean darken so by utilising both dodge
and burn we lighten and darken areas of the image in a very structured specific way because we're in
full control of that unlike using something like the contrast side or the clarity slider which
is fine but what that does is a global adjustment and this is not a global adjustment it's a
very specific minuscule pointy little kind of effect right okay so um yeah we're gonna
kind of just jump into it because there's no point hanging around i need a cup of tea
tea tea is so good okay and grab a wacom pen and we're gonna walk through this okay
so today i'm gonna use the wacom intuos pro medium it's my personal favourite in terms
of the choice of the size um i still do use my keyboard shortcuts because uh personally i just
prefer it so um i don't like using the keys the key things we're not fully with them just yet
so uh yeah so i've got this image of Arthur up like i said and what we want to do is go ahead and
apply a console we've finished the edit the before of the image looked like this this is the after
okay so everything else is done but he has not had anything done to him right nothing is happening on
him it's all going on in the background so what we want to do is really just have a look and see how
we can improve this image by utilizing a dodge and burn technique now the one i'm going to walk you
through let's start with right now so the first thing that you're going to need to do is have the
image open in photoshop and then we're going to go ahead and go down to the new layer icon down here
but we're going to go ahead and hold down Option on the keyboard if you're on a windows that is Alt
so we're holding down Option or Alt on the keyboard and we just click once on the new layer
icon and we will get up this little box here so in this box we want to title the layer as contour
i call this contouring you can call it dodge and burn and just do whatever you want i don't care
so we've got a contour on here we're going to change the mode okay so this is a little mode
drop down and we're going to go ahead and change the mode to overlay right and this is the reason
this little step next this is the reason why we go ahead and we add a new layer in that method
because otherwise we can't get to this box so this box is really important an alternative way
of opening up the new layer dialog box is to do a shift command 'n' or a Shift Ctrl 'n' on a windows
so we're going to go ahead and fill with overlay Neutral colour and click ok what that's done for us
is if you look over here we have a grey layer okay so it looks completely grey but it's see-through
that's only because it's on overlay so remembering our blend mode basics what if it's grey we think
overlay because overlay is basically operating on the fact that it's going to make middle grey
invisible so we're on a grey layer if photoshop is terrifying for you i probably should have said
this earlier go ahead and look at the photoshop basics video that's above um and if that's still
not enough then go ahead and have a look at the photoshop for beginners online course which is
over on our website so uh yeah let's go ahead and have a look at this so what we want to be doing is
just having a little bit of an assessment of the image it stands to reason at this stage that you
should have correct white balance correct exposure everything's looking really good um the image is
fine a little bit noisy maybe we could run through topaz labs denoise ai to remove the noise i'll go
ahead and link a video on that above uh in fact let me just run it through it and i'll be back
in a sec okay so now that we've got no noise happening in the background thank you very much
topaz labs denoise ai uh what we're to do is we're going to go ahead and look at this contouring so
we want to go ahead and click on our contour layer making sure that that is selected okie
cokie and then we're going to grab our brush you get to the brush by pressing 'b'
i just like doing it that way it's just so much easier or you can go ahead and click over here on
the brush icon then what we're going to do is make sure that our palette is set back to the default
black and white we can do that by pressing 'd' on the keyboard 'd' for Dan Dan okay 'd' for Dan Dan
so what we then gonna do is go ahead and make sure that we've got the correct size i'm gonna
zoom in a little bit closer onto the eyes so that you guys can see this nice and nice and clearly
i always start my dodge and burn around the eye i just always do and i always start on white
so i'm going to press 'x' to flip my palette so that i've got white up on the top there
and then i need to change the brush size so to do that i'm going to hold down control and option on
the keyboard and then click and drag to make my brush smaller larger softer or harder okay
so it's just those two little handy keyboard shortcuts we've got two videos of keyboard
shortcuts for photoshop go ahead and look at them above so what we're going to do now is
focus on a nice little brush we want it to be nice and soft and we're going to cut the opacity to 20%
again keyboard shortcut in use here so then what i'm going to do is just start to ring around the
eye on the areas that are naturally highlighted okay so that's a really really important thing
about dodge and burn is that you're not wanting to redraw the image right you're not wanting to
reinvent the light that was there originally what you're doing is you're using your tools
you're dodging your burn your light and your dark your white and your black to go around and kind
of accentuate the light that was naturally there in real life okay so this light that we've got up
here you can see let me switch to a different tool here that we've got an area of lightness
here and then next to an area of darkness that gives us our perfect line here so that we can
accentuate with a burn and accentuate with a dodge and doing that around the image is what makes it
successful so what i'm gonna do is go ahead and continue you don't need to be too perfect
uh but a good control would be beneficial okay so i've gone ahead and done the um catch lights there
as well really really important to have them done just gonna back that one off a touch uh
very very important that they are the lightest part of the image okay and then we're gonna have a
uh probably dropped to 10% now so we're going to go to 10% opacity keeping the brush the same size
and i'm going to go and start to lift the iris okay so i'm going to just start at the bottom
i'm not going too much further and i'm lifting at the bottom area around here okay then i will
go ahead and start to map by changing my brush size okay so for larger areas use a larger brush
for smaller areas use a smaller brush and what we're going to do is we're just going to follow
the natural highlights and shadows all over the subject okay so don't be super specific to one
area like for example don't only do the eye you want to go around and follow the natural
highlights for every area of the subject don't go over the edge of the subject because it will just
look wrong it looks like you've ruined your mask and we don't want that when you've done your fine
detail and there's a little bit on the ears that we probably could do a little bit more of but when
you have done your fine detail and i will show you the speed at which i usually contour at this stage
because nobody has so much time to do really slow contouring so what we want to be doing is going
around doing all of these little highlight areas highlight areas um and then what i would usually
do okay just like as a top tip because i did start on the head but i'm not gonna kind of go
there next i'm gonna switch to black and whilst we're down here on the body i'm gonna start to do
my burning okay so now we're following the natural shadow okay so we've followed the highlights
now following the natural shadow we're going to go ahead and just accentuate again
what is already there we're not reinventing the light we're just drawing with what is in the image
if 10% is too strong you can always drop to a lower percentage that's fine so i'm just going round
again just following the natural shadows natural shadows natural shadows we're not reinventing it
i feel like i've stressed that enough by now so i'm not going to say it again
and do the pupil okay top tip do actually do it don't don't forget about it
okay so i'm gonna just stop here because there's no point really continuing any
much further along than that so this is the image now we're at the final
stage we're running along the final mile and that's the end this was the before
this was the after this was the before this was the after look at the complete transformation
in the image it is a photograph that has been dodged and burned it is not a photograph that
has been heavily retouched okay before after look at the definition on the body after
look at the definition on the face after right i can't stress the importance of doing this enough
like it literally will transform your images from start to finish so that's your contouring if you
were wondering the layer looks like this okay so this is what a dodge and burn layer looks like
when you basically take everything else off you can see that it kind of just looks a bit strange
the face looks interesting but then if you turn the rest of your layers on it starts to make sense
and there's no reason why you have to stop there you can use your brush as i
often do to go ahead and actually add a little bit of a vignette coming round because you can just
go ahead and painty mc paintison and on there you can go ahead and contour your objects in the image
which is something that i do do as well reasonably regularly so that is my pro tip of the week if you
want more tips go ahead and check out our premium membership where you guys get like a lot more i'll
let the premium members explain why membership is so amazing so i'll just leave that to them guys
because those are super anyway this was dodge and burn method number one there's a lot of different
methods i will be doing a demo on dodge and burn at the photography show so if you would like to
come and see us in Birmingham at the NEC with some or one of our dogs we're unsure yet then please
do make sure that you put that into the diary i'll put the dates on the screen right now and
oh i think i said i think that's it love you guys i'll see you soon