How to Dodge and burn (Lightroom) tutorial

Today we can learn how to dodging burn in Lightroom if you really want to sculpt out the face without having to move to

Photoshop and do that really quickly this is the article for you and when we say quickly we don't compromise with quality so today I'm going to share with you some tips and tricks from all sorts of things like color ships intensity and if none of this makes sense do not worry we'll start at rock bottom so without any further ado let's get started let's stuff let's talk about what is dodging and burning it's simply brightening and darkening certain areas of the photo to add dimension to it doesn't make sense let me show you an example but wait we were talking about Lightroom right I just wanted to show you an example so for example I make a circle and I fill it up with gray okay I choose 50% gray and fill it up like that okay now suppose the light is coming from the right top right just like this if I just show you light is coming just like this and this is looking flat now dodging and burning as I said is brightening and darkening certain areas of the object or the image to add dimension to it so this is flat if I go ahead take a brush create a new layer just above this make it a little softer decrease the flow and paint this area let's clip it paint this area a little brighter just like that and paint this area a little darker what does this become this becomes a sphere right this was a circle before have a look this is flat now when I brighten and dark in certain parts of the image it becomes a sphere it adds dimension to the photo and that's what the theory behind dodging and burning is just remember this if you want to take away just one thing from this video this is it anything and I quote anything which is protruding in the direction of light has to be brightened anything which is away from the direction of light has to be darkened I'm going to repeat that again for you anything which is protruding towards the direction of light has to be brightened anything away from the

direction of light has to be darkened so this area is in the direction of light so we brighten this area this area is away from the light so we darkened that area also remember that anything that you want to take forward in the direction of light brighten that anything that you want to take backwards from the direction of light darken that so here Leon Landrum with this beautiful picture of Amanda and this photo was submitted by Jim Smith from James for photography thank you so much Jim for this photo and just so you know Lightroom does have its own brush for dodging and burning but we are not going to use them so for dodging and burning of course we going to use something called the adjustment brush the shortcut to which is kk4 guide okay press K to get to adjustment brush now it does have a Dodge brush and a burn brush and by the way dodging means lightening burning means darkening okay so it's kind of something which I personally don't like you might want to try this out but I create my own brush so first of all let's go ahead and select burn and let's see what's happening here burning means darkening and by default it decreases the exposure by 0.3 what are we going to do let's create our own brush and in our own brush let's set the exposure to minus 0.5 okay by the way these are my personal preferences you might go ahead and create your own brush the one that suits you but the basic formula and the principle remains the same exposure has to go down now when you paint if you want little more flexibility here's what you need to do let's zoom in quite a bit say one is to four maybe one is to three and decrease the exposure and then decrease something called the flow set the flow to somewhere around 25 okay now if you want to have more control over the softness of the brush slow is something that you would want to reduce so what is slow 25% let me just show you let me just them straight that for you for example if the exposure was -4 total all the way to the left and the flow was hundred look what's happening if I paint here it becomes completely dark now if the flow was say 20 percent then I will have to paint five times to get this kind of darkness one two three four five maybe even more than that okay if the opacity a little more I might have to paint a little list to get this kind of darkness so that's how flow works so let's go back controller command

is Z or Z the way you pronounce it let's go back and delete oh please you didn't want to do it let's delete this brush altogether because we spend a lot of time just painting select the brush and all you have to do press the Delete key and it deletes so we need to create a new brush select new take the exposure to minus 0.5 and then the flow to around 25 and start painting on the areas which are away from the direction of light so the light is coming from this direction from the left so we have a paint in these areas which are facing away from the direction of flight and one of the shortcuts in Lightroom is that if you are using a mouse you just have to scroll to make the brush bigger or smaller make sure the feather is all the way 200 make the brush bigger and start painting over the area's facing away from the direction of light and since the flow is low you have the flexibility of painting more times and have more control over the softness of the brush of the strokes that you paint so just paint over these paint the steps don't just ignore them shadows are important just like that that's looking fine to bring out the nose we need to paint here under the nose so let's go ahead and have a look at it before and after safety just zoom out a bit maybe one is two four and then if we turn off the brush to turn off the brush here is the switch okay so let's go ahead before sure look how beautifully at dimension it adds the face now you can go ahead keep on painting nice book what's interesting about this feature is you can erase the extra areas if you want to just really carve out the face you can press and hold alt or option and when you press that you see the cursor change you see the brush change into a minus instead of a plus now you can go ahead and paint out the areas which you have painted extra and this is one of the best techniques to refine what you have painted just like carving out a statue and many of us even I personally do that I paint a little extra and then use this to really make the selection even better now when you hold alt or option the flow is going to change so set the flow to somewhere around 40 or whatever you like and just areas remove the rocket you have painted extra okay I would like to delete

this area just a little bit and if you want to see where exactly has painted because right now the exposure is a little mild you have to press the key called oh this actually shows you the mask where you have paint it or you can just even check this okay check this out or check this in okay if you check this out this doesn't show it only shows you the effect if you check this in it shows you the mask then you can erase it from the extra area so this is the extra area present hold alt just erase it from there okay and we did a pretty good job so let's go ahead and press all the shortcut just so you know and right now you're seeing this anchor point of the brush if you don't want to see that if you don't want to see that point press H and H stands for hide H again it shows you again now we as humans always tend to get carried away so we need to make the effect a little bit softer and to do that all you have to do increase the exposure just a little bit maybe let's go - 0.4 that's fine and this is what this is the burn brush now have a look at it when we darkened particular areas of the image particular areas of your face it became a little bit greyish so what you see right now is a color shift it's not looking right in this image it's not so much but in other images you will face that you might face that so how to add a color tinge to it simple there is a color option inside of the brush okay so all you have to do click on that cross and select the color which is matching the most so let me give you a tip what here's what I do so if you move left and right the hue changes if you move up and down the saturation changes I'm going to say that again if you move left and right the hue changes if you move up and down the saturation changes so first of all take this point all the way to the up okay this might sound stupid take this point all the way up and then see which one is matching the most so here I see that this color is matching the most and once you have selected that color from that color just move downwards in the same line so for me I guess this is the most natural color and just closer there

you go this added a tinge to it and now it looks natural have a look at the before and after so this is the before if you turn this off it is the after now it's time for us to light in certain areas or in other words dodge so let's create a new brush we don't want to paint with this brush so let's go ahead and click on new otherwise it will just pink with the same brush new and this time take the exposure as you have guessed plus 0.5 and the flow will be the same around 25 is good and brighten up areas which are in the direction of light which are facing the light so this cheek area just like that forehead simple the nose line here press o to look at the mask sometimes it's easier to paint with the mask because you have an idea where exactly you're painting then you can always go back and turn off the mask and control the exposure we are seeing some area you are missing okay and that's the advantage turning off the mask and having a look and very exactly we are painting just to brighten them a little

area there and you go turn off the mask press Oh have a look this is quite too much so what people do we would just produce it maybe go 0.3 or 0.25 have a look at the before and after so this is the before let's press H to hide this and then have a look at the before and after before after makes a ton of difference let's have a closer look so we would go to one is to four and have a closer look so before after now you can play with it as much as you want because all this is non-destructive you can always press H again go back to the burn and just change it or paint extra control the exposure do whatever you want and that's pretty much how to dodge and burn in Lightroom just remember one thing anything which is protruding in the direction of light has to be brightened anything which is facing the light has to be brightened anything which is going away from the direction of light facing away from the direction of light has to be darkened I hope this video helped en appendage make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not to subscribe it brings about that you guys don't mess any other features tips tricks and tutorials I'll see you guys in the next until then Satan and make sure that you keep creating.