Dodging and Burning in Adobe Photoshop is a technique that often goes overlooked.  I believe that is in part because the younger generation never set foot in a real dark room had had the experience of using pieces of card stock to manipulate light during the print process.  In today’s world of adjustment layers and layer masks I feel like the dodge and burn is all but forgotten.

There is a way to use dodge and burn non-destructively on an image using layer blending modes that I find very useful for subtle image corrections.

For this example I will work on a picture of the Swiss Alps that has some extreme highlights in the snow areas, and deep dark shadows in the trees.  I should add, yes this is a poor image and Photoshop skills should not be used in place of using the proper technique in the field to capture an image.  So enough of a sidebar, back to the tip.

First add a new layer above the background layer and fill the layer will a 50% gray.  Do this by selecting a new layer then from the Edit menu select Fill. Then Choose 50% gray from the content drop down and click Ok.

Next set the Layer blending mode to Overlay for the new layer.  Once you set the new layer to overlay it will become invisible.

Now you can use the dodge and burn tools on the new overlay layer.  If you make a mistake, you can always refill the layer and start over.  With this approach you are not working with your original pixels so you can always fall back to a previous point.  You’ll notice from looking at the layers panel, the new Dodge & Burn Layer looks an awful lot like a layer mask.

For the final image I have lightened up the trees and mountains a bit.  As well as adding a little additional light to the small grassy stream area in the middle ground improving the overall tones.  A nice little trick to save an image that was in need of a little tweaking.

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