A ways back I covered the basic process of converting a color digital image into black and white (or similar toned image): B&W Conversion

I've wanted to do a quick follow up for a while now on dodging and burning (oh so useful when combined with B&W photography).

What is Dodging and Burning? 

D&B is a direct descendant from the dark room, but like many such techniques we have quite a bit more control of it when making use of it in the digital arena.  

• Dodging: Brightening an area, by raising the luminance or 'brightness' of the pixels
• Burning: Darkening an area, by lowering the luminance or 'brightness' of the pixels

I just want to take a second to point out the D&B is not restricted to B&W images at all. However, it does tend to have the most impact when combined with B&W images for reasons too complex to cover in this snippet of a blog.

Let's take a look at an example:

On the left we have a untouched image (well, besides cropping and toning etc) and on the right we have an image that has been both dodged and burned in select areas.

Can you see the difference between the two?

The left image is has great potential, unfortunately if it was left as is it would have to go squarely in the discard pile. Compositionally and subject matter wise it's very well rendered (if I may say so myself). However in terms of light it has a negative focal point. In other words, while we should be looking at the face our eye instead moves to the two brightest points...the hair and the blanket. The face is simply too dark and too low contrast (flat).

The image on the right is a huge improvement, we can see that the blanket has been muted quite a bit (by burning i.e. darkening) and the the face and upper body are much brighter (you guessed it, dodge!).

How does the tool actually work?

In photoshop the dodge and burn tools are pretty straight forward (they are likely to be similar in most other image editing programs).

They operate as 'paint brushes' i.e. they have similar options to a simple standard brush. Of course we aren't painting with color we are painting with brightness or darkness. You actually 'paint' over the image with the appropriate tool.

Doesn't sound too bad, does it? :)

Both tools will allow you to select 'highlights, midtones, or shadow' which means you can refine your dodging or burning to just particular areas of brightness (very handy when going for that precise or subtle look).

If you are just starting out forget all that and just leave it on midtones.

Well, that should be enough to get you started. Experiment and have fun! :)

Cheers, -B