“TOAST! Tim and Ally…. Really?” “Erm yes…It really does help with Dodge and Burn tools. We’ll get to that later but first things first.”

Dodge and burn tools have become a bit old hat to many photographers. With so many quick and easy digital ‘fixes’ it’s easy to see why, but these tools, although going back to traditional printing times, are some of the best ways to make your black and white images (and colour too) look amazing. We can safely say that there is not an image on our blog that doesn’t use at least one of these in some way or other. See our tips and geeky explanations for what makes a good black and white image.

Dodge and burn in traditional printing

In traditional printing, you have an enlarger which projects your negative onto paper. The more light you expose the paper to through the negative, the darker the print will be. After you’ve done a test strip, which helps you work out the required exposure, you would then expose the light from the enlarger onto your paper. Depending on the exposure, there can often be areas of the image that would be too dark or too light. You would then do another test strip over those areas to work out that exposure time. Dabbling or jumping into film photography – see our post on the best film for travel photography and filters for black and white photography.

Dodging

When it comes to the final exposure of the print, you would expose for the final image with adjustments, but for the area that was too dark and needed less time, you would use a piece of card, normally attached to a piece of wire to wave madly over that area to prevent light getting to it – well maybe not madly, but moving enough to prevent a hard edge being projected onto the paper. This lightening technique is called dodging.

Dodging the print with cardboard ellipses on sticks

The further away from the paper you manipulate the light, the softer the dodged or burnt area edges will be.

Burning

For the area that needs more light, you would expose the image with the normal exposure, then you would give the area the needs more light, the extra light that it needs. How do you do that? Well, depending on the size and shape of the area, you can use your hands cupped together to block out the light and only allow certain areas to get extra light, or you could also use a piece of card with a hole cut in it to give that area more light … directing (or burning) the light. Again you wave it gently between the enlarger and the paper (to prevent getting a hard edge).

Burning in areas by giving them extra exposure through the cardboard hole

Pro tip:

Now one of the advanced traditional techniques used by traditional film printers is to dodge or burn with a different contrast. This is done by using multi-grade paper and changing the grade filter on the enlarger lens before dodging or burning. This technique allows you to have a combination of high and low contrast so for example in your scene you might need more contrast in the sky to get awesome looking clouds but the foreground needs sensitive shadow and highlight detail so a lower contrast.

Dodge and burn in Photoshop or Affinity photo

Now digitally, the darkroom effect can be applied in Photoshop. In your toolbar, normally down the left-hand side, you should see what at first glance looks like a lollipop. This is in fact a version of the round piece of card on a piece of wire or stick, used in dodging. Click and hold that and you’ll see 2 other icons and the text. We’re not going to look at the Sponge tool but the Burn tool has a hand with a hole made with the fingers and the thumb. This is depicting one of the options you can use when burning in!

When you choose any of these you will see your options along the top menu change to something like this.

This means that you can control how much dodging / burning you will do to your image with the exposure, and what tones you will affect, such as Highlight, Midtones or Shadows.

Most of the time you will need midtones, but if the area you wish to adjust is in the highlights or shadows, you then choose the appropriate Range from here. Choose a brush size and click and drag around the area you wish to lighten / darken. Be careful not to overdo it and use a brush bigger than you think. Undo is your friend here!

So where on earth does toast come in?

Well a lot of people get confused with which one darkens and which lightens.

The easiest way to remember this is:

If you burn the toast it will go darker – hence Burn darkens – easy to remember now.

Dodge and Burn in Raw (adjustment brushes)

There are a number of reasons to dodge and burn using adjustment brushes in the Raw file converter but the 2 main ones ore these.

• This is a non-destructive technique so you can always come back and re -edit the image at a later stage.
• You can use the dodge and burn with contrast adjustments like the advanced traditional film technique mentioned above.

In Adobe Photoshop (CS6 or CC) Open your Raw image in the Raw file converter and navigate to the adjustment brushes. It’s along the top.

Paint the area you wish to dodge and burn and then adjust the settings on the right hand side. We usually use the clarity slider to add contrast when needed and the contrast slider to reduce contrast.

Do a new adjustment for each area you wish to work on. (Not sure about Photoshop or Affinity – see our post which gives the lowdown on them). See also our Top Photoshop shortcuts.

Putting it into practice

We photographed the tower on the City wall in Dubrovnik, Croatia, but the original looks so uninspiring that a bit of Dodging and Burning was required.

• The sky was quite tricky as while the whole area needed darkening, some parts needed less contrast and some more. We did this with 2 large burning in areas with adjustment brushes. Both darkened with the Exposure slider but one added contrast with the Clarity slider while the other reduced contrast with the Contrast slider. See our post about dramatic skies.
• The sea was burned in and had added clarity
• The tower was dodged to lighten it but with added clarity to show detail in the texture.

Original image

Areas we adjusted with the brush

Final result

Revolutionise your new images and give new life to old ones

Dodging and burning has been used by film photographers since photography was invented and it’s still one of the best ways to get what you want from an image. Give your new images that exquisitely beautiful look you have admired in the masters printers work or add new life to old photographs.

Mostly, enjoy what you do.

If you are in the London / Essex / Suffolk area, we run training at your office / premises in Photoshop. Want to buy Photoshop – click the Adobe image at the bottom of this page from this link.

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Lokrum Island from Dubrovnik wall look out post

Lokrum Island from Dubrovnik Old City Wall

There are quite a few unique features to photograph on Lokrum, so long as you don’t mind walking. The monastery is interesting, but it’s so beautifully kept with perfectly manicured lawn, peacocks and rabbits, that it loses the whole feel of “ruin”. You can’t go in anywhere – all doors were locked when we visited and it looked like there was some restoration work being carried out.

Attention Game of Thrones fans … as most GoT fans know, a lot of filming is done in Dubrovnik, and around the corner of the Monastery, there is a small door which leads to a section with lots of videos of interviews with actors from the show, behind the scenes footage and … drumroll … a replica Iron Throne … which you can sit on.

We found the two main areas to photograph were the Dead Sea and “Rocks”. The Dead Sea, is a small pool, which is a very interesting shade of bluey-green. If you are photographing at midday, as we were, the lighting is very harsh – half is in sunlight and half is in shade – so we stuck to photographing the cave area which was in shadow.

Online, Tim had seen a picture of an area called “Rocks” which showed an archway in the rock opening up to the sea, and he felt sure that we could create a better image. We nearly missed this because it’s quite well hidden, but when we finally found it, it was stunning. (Wear sensible shoes for this – lots of clambering over rocks). Once again, shooting at the time we were there, meant very harsh lighting. (Unfortunately, you can’t stay towards sunset, because the last boat in October goes back at 16:00 to the mainland). So, we’re back to the same problem of harsh light and dark shadows. We can get around this to a certain degree, because we’re shooting RAW and can pull a lot of detail from the shadow and highlight areas. During these situations, we tend to bracket our pictures. This means shooting a normal exposure then a number of stops under and over – (number of stops depends on the harshness of the light and most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have a bracketing function). This then enables us to copy details from one image into another, that are too extreme for the sensor to record. One can also use various pieces of software to put the images together as an HDR image but be careful using this as it has a tendency to look “overcooked”.

Again, as we were hobbling our way around the island with our very stiff legs from the previous days, we were heading to the Fort Royal. This comes after a long walk along the “Path of Paradise” … sadly anything but a path of paradise haha, as it’s all up a very … long … hill. But it is worth the climb. Once in the Fort Royal you get an awesome view over the city. The Fort is also an interesting structure to photograph.

Just don’t miss the last boat back!

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Dubrovnik City Roofs with beautiful colours and textures

Our day on the city walls was slightly overcast with a tiny bit of blue sky. Initially this might seem a bit of a downer but in fact it made making images a lot easier because we didn’t have to worry about bright sunlight and harsh shadows. Of course, sometimes hard light can give you beautiful textures on walls, but we’ve compensated for this in post-production by intensifying the micro-contrast in RAW, known as Clarity.

Dubrovnik City Walls from Fort Lovrijenac

Starting from the Pile Gate entrance (pronounced Peelar and is the main entrance to the Old City) , we walked up and even though we’d spent a few days looking at the buildings, it was jaw-droppingly spectacular from this new angle. There is just so much to photograph, but you need to be aware every time you make a new image, of your composition, because it’s so easy to get distracted by the beautiful architecture and then you just end up recording the scene. The first half is undoubtedly the best. Being able to look down onto “King’s Landing Harbour” with part of the wall in the foreground, adding depth to the scene produces some spectacular images.

Dubrovnik City Walls

There are a number of cafés and toilets along the top where you can stop for ice creams and coffees etc. We really enjoyed photographing the oubliettes and produced some incredibly interesting and surreal images from these. For a slightly different view, so you don’t keep getting the wall in your shots, Tim ended up holding the camera high above his head, having first focussed and checked exposure, using the angled viewing screen on his Sony to compose the shot. This works particularly well on Tim’s Sony with an adjustable back screen, but is a bit more hit and miss with my fixed screen Nikon.

Using the swivel screen for a higher vantage point 

This is quite difficult because of the bright light and would have been worse had it been sunny. NB: A lot of mirrorless and DSLR cameras have the ability to transmit the live image to an iPhone or iPad and this can be useful in these sort of situations, where one of you photographs and the other directs from the tablet screen.

On one afternoon as we were sitting for a rest, just outside the Pile Gate, Tim thought he’d drop his Zeiss lens onto concrete. It rolled into a gutter of the same diameter, narrowly missing falling through the gutter and out the other side and plummeting down 2 storeys. Phew!

Pile Gate

Cable Car

Some great images can be recorded from the top of the mountain, looking down onto the Old City. To do this, you need a trip up in the cable car. Sadly we did this on the only day it rained. But as it was our last day, we still managed a romantic meal in the Panorama restaurant looking down over the town as the lights came on and illuminated it all. Romance 8. Photography 1!

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Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow! Turns out that having walked up and down several hundred steps in the Dubrovnik Old City, produces this unique sound the following day, and the following …

Why Dubrovnik Old City?

There are so many amazing places to go to, to create images. And Dubrovnik Old City is one of those. Architecture, scenery and landscape, all in one place. You couldn’t ask for more.

Dubrovnik Old City, from Fort Lovrijenac

What we first found

As we hobbled our way around the city with major pain in our legs, we found stunning views, awesome ancient architecture with a fairy-tale feel about it, azure skies, inviting looking Adriatic Sea, alley-ways that were just calling out to be photographed, and lots of really interesting doors (yes, really doors! You can find amazing images in almost anything!)

We were there the end of October to the beginning of November and it was still sunny, with temperatures reaching about 20 degrees, although cooling right off in the afternoon and evening. From a photography point of view, it was a haze free environment and litter-free as well as having less tourists than peak season.

Inside the City Walls, the floors are marble

Inside the City Walls

One of the things we found most interesting were the alley-ways and steps. These can make for quite contrasty images but on the days when it was slightly more overcast than others, this helped our situation. Photographs down alleys are always very difficult to do as they can be quite dark, and if the sun is streaming in to the upper parts, it creates a very contrasty photographic situation. We try to get around this problem, by using backlight on an interesting feature, or by bracketing.

 

“Secret” shooting spot!

After the confines of the city wall, we made our escape up the hill and found the most amazing ‘secret shooting spot’! If you walk straight on out of the Pile Gate a short distance, past the Fort and a couple of supermarkets you will come to a restaurant called Sesame. Turn left in front of this and follow the path and keep going up. You’ll end up in a car park – not very exciting we hear you cry – but don’t fear. At the end of this car park, you will be able to get to the edge of the cliffs, walk down and find some outcrops that will allow you to photograph both the Fort and part of the city walls, which turn an absolutely glorious orange as the sun dips down to your right. If you’re shooting towards evening, then a tripod would be helpful, but there are plenty of rocks to steady your camera on. Wear sensible shoes, and be very careful, as one wrong footstep could end up with a sudden death drop into the ocean.

 

From the secret parking lot spot

Night-time Photography

As we try and travel super-light most of the time, we don’t always travel with a tripod, so we tend to use objects to keep the camera steady.

Dubrovnik Fort Lovrijenac and harbour at night

On this occasion, we used the wall overlooking the edge of the city wall and the fort (Game of Thrones, Kings’ Landing harbour!) If you wish to get movement of the water, you need a long exposure 4-5 seconds at least.  An ND (neutral density) filter will give you much longer exposures giving you awesome results.

Dubrovnik Couple at Night

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