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Some days, I just need to play in Photoshop. After spending a couple of hours at Lake Mary with my son and his new dog, Ryder, I had many fun images, but, the lighting was harsh. We went in the middle of the day and to compensate for the harsh light, I used center weighted metering to expose for the shadows. The images were okay, but I decided it would be challenging and different to create a high key image.

After making basic adjustments in Lightroom, I pulled the image into Photoshop. Here I opened the Silver Efex Pro plugin and chose the high key preset. That gave me the basic look but I felt it needed a few finishing touches. So, I added a dodge/burn layer to lighten and darken areas at whim. If you haven’t created a dodge/burn layer, it is very easy.

Hold down the Alt/Opt key while adding a new layer in Photoshop. change the blend mode to Overlay and then check the box to fill the layer with gray. Now, use a white brush to dodge and a black brush to burn in details. You will want to drop the opacity of your brush to 10-15% so that your dodging/burning is subtle.

That’s all it takes to dodge and burn in Photoshop. Next time you are working on images, take a few minutes to try something different – maybe you will like it?