Using Dodge & Burn Through a Luminosity Mask

By: Marty Kesselman

6/24/2011
This article will utilize an advanced method of performing dodge and burn operations
using an overlay layer, and incorporates the concept of the luminosity mask to make the
painting process simple and easy to do without leaving tell-tail brush strokes.

Consider the following image:

This image is lacking some contrast and color saturation. The sky has poor cloud
definition.

This will be easily transformed into the image shown below.

We will first examine address the contrast and color saturation by creating a luminosity
mask and using it to improve contrast by copying the masked image to a layer above the
background and changing the blending mode to overlay.

Step 1- Create a luminosity mask and make it a selection:

This is done by highlighting the background layer to assure it is active and using the
keyboard shortcut ctl+alt+3 for CS5, or ctl+alt+2 for CS4, or ctl+alt+~ for earlier
versions of CS or Elements.

You will see a selection indicated by marching ants. This is a very special masked
selection containing all shades of gray and is based upon the brightness of the image
pixels and referred to as a luminosity mask. The marching ants are established for
luminosity values above 128 (50% brightness value).

Step 2- Copy the masked version of the image to a layer above your background original
layer. This is accomplished by pressing ctl+j.

Below is an example of what the masked image might look like.

Highlight the masked image layer (second layer) and change the blending mode to
“overlay”.
The resulting affect on the image is a more contrasty looking image. The lights are made
lighter and the darks are made darker. This also boosts the color contrast making deeper
colors. The result for our image is shown below.
The sky has now lost even more detail in the clouds but the green grass has become
deeper and darker.

Step 3- Burn the sky and brighten (dodge) the trees to bring out more detail.
The dodge and burn process we will use is an overlay layer with a 50% gray fill. With an
overlay layer of black and white and shades of gray; brightness of 50% gray (128) will
not change the image appearance. Painting with white will dodge, painting with black
will burn. This is a sensitive process and therefore should be done with a very soft brush
(hardness less than 10%) and opacity about 10% (to avoid painting with too much color).

Create a new layer filled with 50% gray:

a) This is accomplished by alt+click the new layer icon below the layers in the layers
palette. It is rectangle with a rectangle in it (second from right).
b) This will bring up the “new layer” dialog.
a. Change the blending mode to “overlay”
b. A new choice will appear which says “fill with overlay-neutral color (50%
gray)”. Click on the checkbox and click OK.

Select the brush tool or press”B”. Select a soft brush wih low opacity so that you can
paint with little color and allow color to build.
a) Press d to get the default colors.
b) To burn (darken) the sky; assure the foreground color is black (paint with black.

We now want to get our luminosity mask again. Since we didn’t save it we must
highlight the background layer to make it active and press ctl+alt+3 as before. With the
luminosity selection activated (marching ants) it is best to hide the selection while
painting. This is accomplished with the keyboard shortcut ctl+h. To unhide press ctl+h
again.

Now assure you are on the burn layer by selecting the top layer to activate it. With the
selection hidden it easy to see what you are doing.
a) adjust the brush size with your square bracket keys.
b) Paint over the sky area or areas that you want to burn by painting with black.
c) Apply additional strokes to add black color and darken the areas that need to be
burned.
There is no need to be too careful with your brush since you are actually painting through
the luminosity mask. With each stroke you lay down more and more black.

Step 4- Dodge (lighten the dark areas.

This can be done on its own layer by creating a new layer as before, or simply painting
on the layer we have with white, but using a luminosity layer that is the inverse selection
(the darker pixels).

a) First we will make the selection visible again by pressing ctl+h. The marching
ants reappear as before. Now we want to select the inverse. This can be done
using the keyboard shortcut ctl+shift+I or select>inverse. The selected areas will
flip.
b) Change the foreground color to white by pressing “x”.
c) Hide the selection as before with ctl+h
d) Now you can paint on the same layer as before with white or create a new layer
filled with 50% gray as before and paint with white to dodge (lighten)

The image below shows the layers that I used.

With the sky burned there are two dust spots that are now visible just above the tree.
To fix this I merged all of the visible layers to get a composite layer containing all of the
changes we made. This is achieved by holding the alt key while clicking on the small
arrow at the top od the Layers palette and while still holding the left mouse key down
pointing to the merge visible selection and releasing the left mouse.

a) Now we can use the healing brush to heal away the dust spots.
b) Enlarge the image so that you can easily see the spots
a. Double click the magnifying glass to enlarge to 100%.
b. Drag the image around until you see the spots using the hand tool.
c. Size the healing brush tool to fit the spot (slightly larger to include some
surroundings and left click on the spot.
d. Repeat as necessary.

Done.