Dodge or burn?

I had no idea what to title this. I have a photo that I am working on that is shot in broad daylight. It is of a bride and groom. The brides face is fine, but the grooms has direct sunlight on it and is very overexposed. I want to even them out, but I do not want to make it obvious. What method should I use?

Rob.

Dodge or burn ,, Neither from what you discribe , I would probably do an adjustment layer for levels or curves and then just paint on the mask what I didnt want adjusted , without seeing the image its a bit hard to advise you .

Rod

Sorry I dont have the image handy. I'm not at my desktop right now. Does anyone have a link to a tutorial or something off the top of their head...I'll keep searching as well. Cheers.

Rob.

I agree with RodBarker, however, out of the two burning would darken it up a little, and if you want a quick...o.k. job, it will work fine.

Rob

JMO but the Dodging and Burning tools in Photoshop are pretty close to useless.

If you want to get results that mimic traditional dodging and burning I recommend trying the follow method.

Step-1 create and new layer set the layer style to “Overlay” and choose fill with 50% gray
Step 2 choose a soft paint brush and set the opacity to 30% if you want to dodge set the color of the brush to white if you want to burn set it black. * I might have it mixed up so some please correct me if I do.
Step 3 start painting over the area that you want to dodge or burn, the 30% is just a starting point you can increase or decrease it as needed.

Mike

Mcary wrote in post #3074251
Rob

JMO but the Dodging and Burning tools in Photoshop are pretty close to useless.

If you want to get results that mimic traditional dodging and burning I recommend trying the follow method.

Step-1 create and new layer set the layer style to “Overlay” and choose fill with 50% gray
Step 2 choose a soft paint brush and set the opacity to 30% if you want to dodge set the color of the brush to white if you want to burn set it black. * I might have the mixed so some please correct me if I do.
Step 3 start painting over the area that you want to dodge or burn, the 30% is just a starting point you can increase or decrease it as needed.

Mike

Thanks a lot. That helped me out where I needed it.

Now I have another question. When using the patch tool I find that when I trace near a bright or dark color it bleeds once I patch in the new color. I mean it bleeds the old edge color into the new patch color. What am I doing wrong?

Mcary wrote in post #3074251
Step 2 choose a soft paint brush and set the opacity to 30% if you want to dodge set the color of the brush to white if you want to burn set it black. * I might have the mixed so some please correct me if I do.

yeah...it's the other way: white makes a blend layer either transparent or lighter (lighter for light blends). The problem with overlay is that it's desaturating the underlaying image. PS's burn tool is essentially bumping up contrast. My preference for doing a "burn and dodge" in PS is to make several exposure layers. Just open up a RAW file with EOS software, adjust it so that you have an image that has good definition in the blacks, open another and adjust the layer to have a good definiton in all your highlights, and lastly, open another one that has good exposure for all your midtones. Copy and paste these into one file in photoshop: giving you a normal, under, and over exposed layer. Using your normal exposure as your starting point, apply a mask and have your overrexposed layer underneath. Select the mask, and you'll see your color palate change to black and white. Make sure your paintbrush is set to black, and make sure your brush's opacity is set to pen tablet pressure/ no size options. Now with the mask selected, when you paint on your normal layer, it will mask it out to reveal your overexposed layer underneath. This will help define your shadows.

You can keep painting until you have all your shadows defined. To do the hightlights, You can put your underexposed layer on top. Apply a mask again. I'd paint bucket black on your mask, so that the underexposed layer is now hidden. Get out your paintbrush, make sure its mask is selected, and then paint in white on your underexposed layer. This will reveal that layer as you're painting: defining your highlights.

Edges like that can be isolated with a selection. Then use the Healing Brush within the selection.
My fav selection tool for hard edges: Selecting areas in PS.

You should try shadow/highlight tool. This usually works for me and it is a very quick edit. If that doesn't achieve the results you want the advice above with making an additional layer and masking in is what I do when shadow/highlight doesn't cut it.

BTW: If you shot this raw then you would be probably be better off making 2 layer copies based on exposure and then masking together.