Dodging and Burning

[jphilsantos]

Hello everyone I am pretty new in the concept of dodging and burning I have read different stuffs about it but I am still confuse about it.

What should you do in dodging and burning?
What should be your mindset while doing it?

Right now for me dodging and burning is making the highlights lighter and the shadows darker.

[edgework]

Think of micro and macro approaches. In the first you would even out unsightly variations locally—a spot that stands out as darker than the surrounding skin would get gently dodged until it blends in. This approach takes a small brush, high magnification and lots of patience, sometimes working at the pixel level. Smooth skin is the result of seamless gradients moving in all directions. Dodging and burning removes the disruptions in those gradients.

But you can also use it to either enhance the shape that is already present in the surface of your object (usually skin, but not always) or you can alter highlights and shadows.

One thing you never want to do is actually use the dodge and burn tools themselves. Some people use two different curve layers, one to lighten, one to darken, both hidden by layer masks. Then they'll paint white into the mask where they want to lighten or darken the image. Others, (myself included) prefer to keep everything on one layer set in soft light or overlay mode, alternating white and black strokes to produce the desired effects. Works best with a pen at low opacity and set to pressure sensitive.

[Findedeux]

I would agree with the above advice.

For a great tutorial see "The Art of Dodge and Burn"

The only thing I do not like to do is set it to pressure sensitive. I have never found size or opacity pressure sensitivity to be useful for D&B.