Fashion Shot: Dodging/Burning Blemishes

Topics Covered in This Photoshop Tutorial:

The Dodge & Burn Tools, Channels

Exercise Preview

Exercise Overview

While the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush are powerful tools for general retouching, the Dodge and Burn tools offer a superior approach for addressing specific blemishes and color inconsistencies. This technique requires finesse and patience, but it's the gold standard for preserving natural skin texture while achieving seamless corrections. Professional retouchers rely on this method because it maintains the authentic quality that separates amateur work from polished, publication-ready images.

In this exercise, we'll demonstrate the precision of dodge and burn techniques by addressing subtle imperfections on the subject's forehead—an area where texture preservation is particularly critical for natural-looking results.

Dodging & Burning to Touch up Blemishes

1. If it's not already open, navigate to the Photoshop Adv Class folder and open yourname-model.psd.

2. Select the Dodge tool from the toolbar. This tool selectively lightens areas by reducing their exposure values.

3. In the Options bar at the top of the screen, set an extremely conservative Exposure value. An Exposure of 2 or 3% provides optimal control for precision work. This low setting prevents over-correction and allows you to build up the effect gradually—a hallmark of professional retouching workflow. Higher exposure values often result in obvious, unnatural-looking corrections that immediately signal heavy editing.

4. Open the Channels panel (Window > Channels). Understanding channel-based corrections is essential for advanced color and tone manipulation.

5. When you encounter color casts—such as the red spot visible on the right side of the subject's forehead—examine each individual channel to identify where the discoloration is most pronounced. Color casts typically appear as unusually dark or light areas within specific channels. In this case, you'll notice the problematic area appears as a distinct dark spot in the Green channel, indicating an excess of magenta in that region.

6. Once you've identified the problematic channel, click on the Green channel to select it. This targets your corrections specifically to the channel containing the color imbalance.

7. To maintain visual feedback while working on the isolated channel, click the Eye icon next to the composite RGB channel, as shown below. This technique allows you to see the full-color result while making targeted adjustments to the selected channel.

   

8. You can now perform precise dodging or burning while observing the real-time color changes. Before switching to the Burn tool , ensure you maintain the same low Exposure setting for consistent control. Understanding the color relationships is crucial for effective corrections:

   • Dodging lightens the Green channel, increasing green values and reducing magenta cast in the affected area.
   • Burning darkens the Green channel, decreasing green values and intensifying magenta tones where needed.

   Work in small, deliberate strokes, building up the correction gradually. This methodical approach ensures natural-looking results that won't reveal themselves under scrutiny.

9. Save your progress using Ctrl+S (Windows) or Cmd+S (Mac) and keep the file open—we'll build upon this foundation in the next exercise to explore additional advanced retouching techniques.