You are accessing this forum with [trillian] as part of the url. This may be happening automatically following a move to a new server, or it may be something you are doing as part of a phpbb3 upgrade. If this is not part of an upgrade then be patient and do not bookmark the link, the old links will be working again shortly. If this is part of an upgrade then make sure the owner finalises it in the control panel and selects to redirect to this version of the forum, then once again the link will return to being the old one within 48 hours or so. NEVER BOOKMARK OR PUBLISH THIS LINK IT WILL NOT ALWAYS WORK.
Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 12:59 pm Post subject: Dodging and Burning.
Using Dodge and Burn in Elements 4.
First off in this picture, you can do a lot by selecting the foreground and checking the levels just on the foreground area. I made a rectangular selection (using the Rectangular Marquee Tool) and feathered it (Select > Feather) by 50px,
hit Ctrl L (or Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Levels) to pull up the levels palette, note that the levels are weighted towards the black. The first picture shows how much adjustment I made and the second how it affected the picture
At this point I deselected the Marquee area (Select > Deselect).
The next job is the Dodging and burning. There are three things I think are worth doing, lifting (Dodging) the children, a general lift of the foreground and there is a sort of path through the grass, so to enhance the story of the picture I am going to try to lift that a bit too.
The Dodge and Burn tool can be found at 1 and you select which tool you want to use at 2. 3 allows you to choose whether you want to effect highlights/midtones/shadows. 4 is where you choose the amount of exposure, and as a rule of thumb I always use this at 3%, which allows for great control over the process. Finally, what does dodge and burn do? Dodging makes things lighter and Burning makes things darker, think of charring.
First off I used a 36 pixel brush, zoomed in on the children and Dodged the shadows a little and the midtones a fiar bit on each of the children. I then increased the brush size to 170 and lifted the highlights over the foreground generally and added a touch more to the 'pathway'.
I tried Dodging the shadows on the children some more but they started to look washed out, so decided to call it a day at that.
I've tried to keep this as simple as possible, not using extra layers or masks. Any questions, just shout. _________________
If budget is a problem Adobe Photoshop Elements 4, which is now superseded by 5, is available from Amazon for £10 and is superb.
Coral Paint Shop Pro X is still available, now superseded by PSP Photo X2 which is extremely resource hungry, whereas X is a kindly beast, and can be picked up for around £16 from Amazon. I do most of my work with Paint Shop Pro, as I've been using it for years and am most familiar with it.
For me personally a combination of the two is the ideal set up giving you the best of both worlds. But if you push me for a one, it would have to be Elements. Paint Shop Pro does not have the sophistication of Adobe and it shows. For example I would never use PSP for Dodging and Burning. _________________
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Join! (free) 
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
