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The Dodge and Burn tools are ideal for selective lightening and darkening in Photoshop CC. There are lots of other tools that do a similar job, but there’s something about these two options that will keep you coming back to them, time and time again!
Perhaps it’s the darkroom connection. In the darkroom, areas of a print would be ‘dodged’ by shading some of the light from the enlarger bulb. A small disc on a piece of wire would often be used, an implement echoed in the Photoshop Dodge tool icon. By contrast, parts could be ‘burned’ by focusing extra light from the enlarger onto specific areas, resulting in darker tones. An ‘OK’ hand shape could be used for this, the hole between thumb and finger channelling a thin sliver of light onto the print, hence the hand-shaped icon for Photoshop’s Burn tool.
Of course, all this had to be done in the dark without any feedback until the print was developed. It took patience, tremendous skill and a good deal of trial and error to get right. Thankfully, it’s much easier now. But there’s still great skill in knowing where to dodge or burn, and how far to push it if you’re going to achieve your best results.
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