How to Burn/Dodge B&W film scans in PS

[mfogiel]

I am actually amazed at myself, that I am posing this question only today. I have been using the hybrid film/digital workflow for my B&W photography for almost 6 years now, and I am still dissatisfied with this very basic technique requirement.
Let me clear the point: I normally burn/dodge, using the burn/dodge tool, and although I am normally too impatient to use layers or masks, I tried that at times as well, but the results have never been particularly impressive. What I am missing in the first place, is the understanding if it is possible at all to burn/dodge in PS not by adding/subtracting uniform gray value to the pixels, but by intensifying, weakening the image areas in a selective manner? In terms of darkroom technique, burning in, meant to expose some areas on the paper for a shorter period than others, with the ACTUAL IMAGE, not to "paint over" the normal tonal values with a dark uniform tint. This way for example, grain would be accentuated in the burnt in area, while the PS action actually makes the grain mushy and less visible. The same is true for dodging - even in very light areas, there should be a hint of the grain, and not just a milky uniform white.

The second issue, is how to burn aggressively without creating an unnatural transition from bright to dark areas. A photographer who burnt this way often was Jean Loup Sieff - here are a couple of examples:
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=jean...tbnw=135&start=46&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:7,s:46

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=jean...w=135&start=137&ndsp=23&ved=1t:429,r:20,s:137

Is there a way of creating a sort of graduated filter effect, with a border which you can arbitrarily design on the photo?

Any good tips would be very welcome.

Marek

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

http://chriscrawfordphoto.com/technical/dodge-burn.php

This shows the right way to do it with masks, all of my images are edited this way. So far as I know, the dodge-burn tool always paints grey, black, or white pixels on top of the image. I may be wrong about newer photoshop versions, but I doubt its changed.

 

[Jamie123]

One thing to remember is that when using the burn/dodge tools you can chose to apply it either to "highlights", "midtones" or "shadows". It took me a while to realise that I was always using the burn tool on the standard "midtones" setting. I may be wrong but the way you're describing it it seems that you're doing the same. When you set the burn tool to "shadows" for example, it will increase the contrast without 'painting' a uniform gray over the area.

 

[craygc]

If you're using Photoshop then I would consider straight dodging and burning to be very a simplistic approach given the tools at hand. I find it much better to use locally applied curve adjustments.

1. If you don't use layers then make the adjustment using curves, only focusing on the effect of the area you want to affect the tonality then apply it. Make that state as a history state, return to the previous state then use the history brush with about 20%- 30% opacity and just paint the effect in where required by hand to the required degree
   
2. If using layers, then add a new curves layer and do the same as the first step above - apply curves. Make that as a history state then select that entire curves layer contents and hit delete. Now, again, use the history brush as described above to paint the affect in

 

[Bob Michaels]

I always do any burning or dodging in a separate layer. This allows me to intentionally overdue it a bit, then vary the opacity of that particular layer to to weaken / strengthen the effect.

 

[morback]

In terms of darkroom technique, burning in, meant to expose some areas on the paper for a shorter period than others, with the ACTUAL IMAGE

Hi Marek,

short rectification beforehand: burning means adding light to the area, dodging would be subtracting light.

As for photoshop, in B&W, all I do is enter quick mask, brush my desired working area, exit quickmask, add curve, modify the curve to what I like and then move on to the next dodge&burn area.

Then you can fix your mask, make it as lose or accurate as you like by using brush size and hardness on the mask.

Of course all this happens under the overall curve.

Never used dodge and burn for that, since you actually have very little control over the results and it's a bitch to undo.

Always use layers. Makes your life easier if you change your mind in the future. Base layer is original image, copy it to remove dust & specks (and maybe more radical retouching) and from then on all I have are curves (with masks for local dodge and burn).

For JL's (Salgdo's, HCB, any wetroom printer really..) effect, just make a very loose mask with intense curves. You can't really follow the curve of the hill so well and the lady's outline by shaking a piece of paper at the end of a stick in a darkroom. 😉
Their transition are not very natural if you ask me, quite to the contrary. Unless you're talking about banding, which they would never face in analog printing.

For very smooth mask edges use a 0% hardness brush as big as you can. If that's not enough, go over the edge with 10% opacity or less until it works for you.

 

[Neare]

When I do a rough job of the scans on the computer, i just make a new layer - select "overlay" - use a black brush over the areas I want burned (or white brush for dodging) then change the opacity to the amount needed. You can use multiple layers too.

 

[Jamie123]

Never used dodge and burn for that, since you actually have very little control over the results and it's a bitch to undo.

Not really. You can burn and dodge on a duplicate layer and if you set the exposure low enough (e.g. 5%) you can add on the effect step by step until it's enough. And then, if you're not happy, you can still add a layer mask or modify the layer's opacity to your liking.

I hardly ever use burn or dodge but it can be really useful. Let's say you want to do something like Avedon does here. It's much easier and quicker to do that with the burn and dodge tools (with a tablet pen) than to do it with curve adjustment layers.

 

[venchka]

Lightroom.

 

[mfogiel]

Thanks for all the answers. I normally work on the scanned image, and then save it with a different name, so that my "digital negative" is always there if I want to go back to it and edit again. From what I've seen, the quick mask and local curves adjustment should be the closest thing to the burning and dodging done the darkroom way. (thanks for the tutorial Chris). I have yet to see how easy it is to use these gradient layers though...

 

[venchka]

Lightroom editing is non-destructive throughout. In addition, you can make virtual copies at anytime. Try something. doesn't work? Delete the copy. Works? Copy those adjustments to the original. Want to start over from the beginning? Piece of cake.
Gradient filters can be added at anytime. As many as you like. Each doing something different to a particular area. Dodging and burning tools too.
30 free trial.

 

[kzphoto]

use the quick mask to paint a rough selection to isolate your changes, then add an adjustment layer (levels or curves) to burn / dodge. I've been doing it this way for years and it seems to work best.

Stay away from exposure and contrast -- these seem to really degrade images quickly, in my experience.

 

[Tim Gray]

I'd use layers. Particularly, I like adjustment layers with masks. Doing the method with a simple layer mask on a curves adjustment layer is probably the easiest way and the one I use most.

One way which kind of mimics the it works in a the darkroom is to make an exposure adjustment layer. Set the mask to all black. Paint in in white which areas you want to dodge/burn. In the exposure layer controls, adjust exposure or gamma. They are kind of analogous to time and grade used for split grade dodging and burning.

Another technique I use a lot to recover highlights goes like this: I often have contrast that I like on the bulk of the tones, but the highlights get a bit hot. While viewing the image, hit command-option-2 (or whatever the windows equivalent is). This will make a selection based on luminosity. Then duplicate the base layer and make a layer mask. The selection should be used to make the mask automatically. At this point adjust the duplicated layer's contrast and exposure to give you the highlights you want. Set the blending mode (multiply works) and opacity to bring back the right amount of detail in the blown highlights. And adjust the layer mask to limit the application - you can use curves on it to make it more contrasty, or you can just paint parts of it in or out. You can also invert the mask if you just want to affect the shadows. Also, putting a bit of gaussian blur on the layer mask can help transitions.