- USE DODGE AND BURN TO ADD LIGHT VALUES
12. MAKE LIGHT
REFLECTIONS
Dodging and burning are old photographic terms
from before the age of digital. They refer to
techniques used during the printing process where
parts of the image were exposed specifically to
lighten (dodge) or darken (burn) key areas in order
to add contrast. This helps to enhance and
manipulate the lighting present in an image, with
deep, rich shadows and clear, bright highlights. In
Photoshop, the Dodge and Burn tools offer the
same results.If your photo composites include glass and
lighting, then you are going to have to master
the art of creating reflections or your whole
image will look unrealistic. Fashion photo
retoucher and digital artist José Paulo Reis
(www.madartistgroup.com/jose-paulo-reis)
needed to create a series of reflections on the
fish bowl in this image. The soft glows on the
right-hand side of the bowl were created using
a soft white brush with 50% Opacity and 25%
Flow. Some of these were also treated with the
Gaussian Blur/Motion Blur filter to add motion,
and in the top right he needed to use the Warp
tool to match the curve of the bowl. The
reflections of the window shapes, most
prominent in the top left, were drawn with the
Rectangular Marquee and filled with a
White-to-Transparent gradient at 82% Opacity.
The rectangles could then be duplicated,
warped and treated with Motion Blur to fit the
shape of the bowl.Raul Ferran uses these tools to adapt the lighting
in photos making up a composite: “Once you
establish where the lighting is coming from, you can
start adding your lights and shadows. I always
create these on a separate layer that is filled with
60% black set to Overlay [as it is non-destructive].”
Creative retoucher Fabio Araujo (www.behance.
net/fabioaraujo) agrees with the importance of
using Dodge and Burn in composites: “You can
improve an image or destroy it with the wrong useof light and shadow. It is very important to create a
point of light and follow the same perspective. The
Dodge and Burn tools are good to highlight the
shadows and highlights and create a uniform
image.” These tools are put to use in Araujo’s image
Jurassic Park, shown here alongside the image
before dodging and burning: “I applied the effects of
shadow and light using these tools and you can see
that the rocks have a more realistic appearance and
the water is brighter.”BeforeBefore© Fabio Araujo
© José Paulo Reis
After