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 Dodging and burning is a traditional digital image manipulation technique that is used by many photographers to enhance their images. Photographers have been using this technique to enhance their photos since the very beginning of Photography when film was used. Dodging and burning is a very easy technique with Photoshop. In this Photoshop tutorial, we will show you how to dodge and burn using a non-destructive method that, surprisingly, many people do not know. Doing this non-destructively means that the original image is untouched and all the adjustments are done on a separate layer.

How to Dodge and Burn Non-Destructively with Photoshop

Step 1

Open a photo that you want to dodge and burn. For starters, pick a portrait photo because it is easier to get good results on portraits than landscapes - and it's a lot more fun.

Step 2

First, create a new layer. Choose Layer > New > Layer and enter "Dodge and Burn" as the name of the layer.

Step 3

Choose Edit > Fill and use the settings from the image below. This will fill the layer with a 50% gray. The reason why we use 50% gray as the base color is because when you change the blending mode to overlay, gray will be transparent while anything lighter or darker will be more visible. This way, when you dodge or burn, only the areas that you dodge or burn will be visible.

Now you may ask, why bother filling the layer with gray instead of leaving it transparent? The answer is because you can't dodge or burn on transparent pixels. That is why we need to use a 50% gray layer with an overlay blend mode.

Your layer should be a 50% gray color. Change the blending mode to Overlay and the layer will appear to be transparent.