Deke’s Techniques 299: Enhancing a Photo with Nondestructive Dodge and Burn

299 Nondestructive dodge and burn

In this week’s free Deke’s Techniques episode, Deke will show you how to emulate the classic photographer’s tricks of dodging and burning for dramatic effect. And he’ll show you how to do so without causing any permanent destruction to your image. The trick is not using the Dodge and Burn tools, but rather painting on a separate layer with white (for lightening) and black (for burning) where appropriate. Then a bit of Opacity and blend mode tweaking yields these speak-for-themselves results.

Before and after non-destructive dodge and burn

This is a useful approach for adding editable drama. Check it out and see if it doesn’t nondestructively enhance your photographic life.

You can watch the whole collection of Deke’s Techniques at lynda.com, and if you’d like a free trial membership to check it out, head over to lynda.com/deke and sign up. 

Next entry:Deke’s Techniques 300: Blending an Object’s Shadow into Any Background

Previous entry:The CanAm dekeSessions, a Video Review

  • Awesome - Sharing it!

    Thanks for posting this! It’s so simple and common sense… but as an ancient user of PS, I get stuck in my “old school” ways and no longer experiment :P. I am turning the first part into an action. The vibrant colors are perfect for reference photos for my illustrations.

    I am reposting this to my blogs.

    Melissa Piccone


    Adobe Certified Instructor

    creative-training.com

  • Illustrator Kering

    Hi, Deke…,

    In Illustrator types, how to set word spacing. Some our local language fonts have too many spacing in font… Its about character flyout in illustrator. I’m not talking about paragraph text. I can not set kerning in characters…. Please help…. My language’s most of fonts have too many spacing in “Space”...

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