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Enhance a photo using Dodge and Burn! 7 replies

meowza

Staff meowza posted 1 year ago

Now, you might be thinking,
"B-b-b-but... there IS no dodge & Burn Tools in Aviary, meowza! Are you a moron?"

And you'd be quite right.
But there's no reason why we couldn't possibly fake it.
Here's a little tip to help you spruce up some of your photos using makeshift dodge and burn tools.

My starter image,

(Note: I'll be applying the effects heavier than I normally would to help illustrate my points)

So how do we create this faux Dodge & Burn effect?
First on a new layer, fill the entire image in medium gray (#7f7f7f).


Now, we're gonna set this layer's blend mode to "Overlay".


At this point you might be thinking, "Wow, meowza, you really ARE a moron! That didn't do anything!"
And you'd be right.
The real fun comes when we start painting on this layer.
In order to create a makeshift Burn Tool, we just simply take a soft, low opacity (10%) black brush and paint over our shadow areas directly on our gray overlay layer.
By doing this, you can see we begin to enhance the shadows that were already there like so.
meowza

Staff meowza posted 1 year ago

And we do this over our entire figure.
To use the "Dodge" feature, we simply change our brush to a white brush, and paint over the highlighted areas directly on this same layer.

And after you go over your figure, you should be left with something like this. (The "Overlay" blend mode turned off to show where I painted)


And when we set our Overlay back on, we'll get this.


To enhance the mood even further, I decided to burn the entire background to focus on our figure as well.



And finally, I merged the whole thing, copied it onto a new layer, applied the Sharpen filter to it, then dropped the sharpened layer's alpha to about half way.


And that's it!
Make any image pop with your very own makeshift Dodge and Burn tools!

Have any other techniques to achieve similar effects? Share them NOW!
layered .egg
Avi

Staff Avi posted 1 year ago

This is total genius.
Marslyr

Marslyr posted 1 year ago

Wow, very cool.

Something else to try!

Thanks alot meowza!

Cheers,
Marslyr
AnythingIsPossible

AnythingIsPossible posted 1 year ago

Very impressive!
Suran

Suran posted 1 year ago

you are jesus...
Pdxpark

Pdxpark posted 1 year ago

This looks cool.. but how do you get only the background to black?
I don't really know how to use these tools.. so I'm stuck at the step.
I've avoided Photoshop because it's too complicated to me, so I'm a beginner.. and feeling like these are just like Photoshop... so I don't know what I'm doing.
meowza

Staff meowza posted 1 year ago

Pdxpark said: This looks cool.. but how do you get only the background to black?
I don't really know how to use these tools.. so I'm stuck at the step.
I've avoided Photoshop because it's too complicated to me, so I'm a beginner.. and feeling like these are just like Photoshop... so I don't know what I'm doing.
I just used the paintbrush tool at 100% alpha set to black and colored it all in on a new layer.
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