I’m personally not a big fan of the dodge and burn tool into Photoshop. There is a really easy way to non-destructively dodge and burning areas of your photos. There is a feature to do this already installed in Camera RAW (the adjustment brush) but I find this technique bit easier to use.

I’ve made two videos. The first shows you the whole technique and the second uses our latest free Photoshop action Dodge and Burn.atn

In the video I’ve used a crowd shot but there’s no reason why you can’t you can’t do the same for landscapes, detail shots or any shot really. What is important is that this is not a quick fix to a bad exposure. Ideally there must only be a couple of stops difference between the highlight and shadow areas.

Just make sure that when you open your image in camera RAW that you have your highlight and clipping warning turned ON.

The importance of having the warning is that if there is no recorded information (the red area) then no detail can be salvaged.

I’ll talk a little more on creating printable images on Day 78 – Creating printable images . Here’s the videos…..enjoy!