D&B bright pixels

[KTG]

I am dodge and burning skin. I am using a 50% gray layer, softlight blend mode. (although I have used light and dark curves method). If I have bright pixels, not completely white, but about 26%; when I go to burn them in the pixels are more a shade of gray than the surrounding pixels I want to match. The only way I get them to match is if I clone at the pixel level. I believe one of the webinar presenters does this for very bright hi-lighted pixels too.

I saw Chris T do d&b once and he used a shadow color for his d&b, but when I do this, the color of the pixel does not match the surrounding pixels.

I hope I am being understandable with my issue.

thanks
k

[madclark]

It's because the pixel has little to no color information, so when you make it darker, you get grey, not the color of the surrounding area.

There's a lot of methods people use to fix this. For example, add another layer in color mode and fill in areas that tend to grey with a surrounding color. Some people also use a similar color in the brush, rather than black & white, in the D&B layer and that brings it to a similar color as well. When you're done with your D&B you may also make a merged copy of the image, gaussian blur, change to blend mode and then mask in areas that need color blended back. The last is my favorite since it's the most automated.

Happy retouching!

[ME_wwwing]

can't see what your doing - let me guess. you have an area that is almost blown out.
if so Select the area + a little more>Feather to blend that overlap>Ctrl+J
use eyedropper of the color you want>Fill that selection>Change Mode to Color>Adjust Opacity

i hope that's what your looking for.