CORRECTING EXPOSURE WITH TONE PROTECTED DODGE AND BURN
STEP : 1
Open an image in the Photoshop workspace that contains areas of over and under exposure, or areas of intense shadow and highlight, like the child photo shown in Figure 32-1. It’s a nice enough picture, but the child’s features are obscured by dark shadows and bright highlights, and the window scene is a bit distracting.
Figure 32-1
STEP : 2
Press Shift+Ctrl+N/Shift+Ô+N to create a new non-destructive layer. When the New Layer dialog box opens, Name the layer D&B, set the Mode to Soft Light, and check the Fill with Soft-Light-neutral color box. You are going to apply your Dodge and Burn strokes to this layer.
STEP : 3
Press O to select the Dodge tool and use the settings on the Options bar to determine the tool’s brush size and hardness. Select Shadows from the Range menu and set the Exposure to 25%. Leave the Protect Tones feature selected, as this will help eliminate those strange orange and gray skin tone casts the old Dodge and Burn tools would often create.
[box type="info"] HINT: To quickly adjust the brush size and hardness as you work, press the left ([) and right (]) bracket keys to increase or decrease the brush diameter and press Shift+[ or Shift+] to soften or harden the brush edges.[/box]
Drag your tool across the shadow areas in several passes until the shadow areas are lightened enough to see the details you’d like to reveal.
STEP : 4
Press Shift+O to toggle to the Burn tool, then on the Options bar choose High-lights from the Range menu, and set the Exposure to 25%. Drag your brush a few times across the highlight areas to reduce the glare.
Toggle back and forth between the Dodge and Burn tools, adjusting the Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights ranges until you have the image the way you like it. If there are any distracting areas within your image that pull the eye away from the main focal area, darken them using the Burn tool set to the Shadow Range. For instance, in the picture in Figure 32-1 the left part of the background can be darkened a little more to make the child’s smile more of the focal point.
[box type="info"] HINT: Since highlights tend to catch the eye more readily than shadows, try increasing the exposure when working in the shadows range and decreasing the exposure when working with highlights.[/box]
STEP : 5
To help make the bright background area less distracting, duplicate the image layer (Ctrl+J/Ô+J), select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, set the Radius to about 16 px (if your starting image is 300 dpi, otherwise, select a smaller radius), and then click OK. Press E to select the Eraser tool and with a large, soft-edged brush, erase everything but the bright background area you want to keep, as shown in Figure 32-2.
Figure 32-2
STEP : 6
The last step is sharpening. Select the main image layer and select Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Set the Amount to about 150%, the Radius to 2.3 px, the Threshold to 10 levels, and then click OK. Figure 32-3 shows the original image before (top) and after (bottom) correcting the exposure, blurring the background, and sharpening.
Keep in mind that your particular image may require more or less sharpening than the example, so use your best judgment to choose what looks right to you.
Figure 32-3
CORRECTING EXPOSURE WITH TONE PROTECTED DODGE AND BURN
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