You can watch the video right here, or read the web version below.
Dodging and burning isn’t just an old-school black and white darkroom technique. It’s just as useful on color images, and the Style Brushes in Capture One update this classic technique with powerful digital enhancements.
The key to Style Brushes, for me, is that they start with the enhancement you want to apply and the mask is created as you brush on the adjustment. That seems to me to be a much more intuitive way of enhancing images than starting with the mask and then choosing your adjustments.
So what’s wrong with AI masking?
AI masking tools are all the rage right now and appear to take all the effort out of selecting subjects and areas. Why do this yourself if your software’s AI can do it for you?
The trouble with AI masking is that it creates very hard-edged selections which work fine if you want to isolate and mask very clearly defined subjects, but it’s no good if you want to apply subtle relighting effects or shift colors and tones in broader areas. I find this is what I want to do with images far more often than tightly delineating objects. This is classic ‘dodging and burning’.
The way I look at it is that AI masking is like using a scalpel when what you actually need is an airbrush.
Dodging and burning is central to classic black and white
Dodging and burning was (and is) central to black and white photography. It’s the art of exposing the printer under the enlarger so that you shade areas of the print (‘dodging’) with your hand or a dodging tool, and increase the exposure (‘burn’) areas of the print that you want to come out darker.
Here, I’ve digitally ‘burned’ in the top of the sky to darken it and ‘dodged’ the middle ground to make it much brighter. This was done in Capture One and there’s a little more to these adjustments than just a little selective brightening and darkening, but that’s the basic idea.
But you can also dodge and burn in color
Why not? The only reason dodging and burning in color was never really a thing in the analog era is that it just wasn’t as easy or as practical to do. The fact is, though, that color images benefit just as much from this kind of tonal adjustment as black and white ones. And with all the powerful digital editing tools we have at our disposal in software now, there’s no reason not to revive this ancient art!
This walkthrough uses Capture One, but you can achieve the same effect with Adjustment Brush and adjustment presets in Lightroom. If you’re using neither, I hope you will still find this useful because it could give you some ideas about subtle local adjustment techniques in your own software.
01 Capture One Style Brushes
With Capture One’s Style Brushes you start by choosing an area of the image that you think needs enhancement, then choose a suitable Style Brush from the panel in the left sidebar – you should find this in the Adjust tab. The Built-in Style Brushes are organised into three expanding sections: Color, Enhancements, Light & Contrast.
02 The Deep Sky Style Brush
For example, in this landscape photo I think the sky needs to have a bit more depth and drama. All I have to do is select the Deep Sky Style Brush and start painting on the image. You can change the brush size with the [ and ] keys and right-click to adjust other brush properties. This particular adjustment targets sky tones specifically, so I don’t have to be too precise about my brushwork. And I can always go back later to tidy it up if I need to, as we’ll see.
03 Where your adjustments are stored
Every time you use a Style Brush, it creates a new adjustment layer. You can see from this screenshot that Style Brushes also name the layer after their own name, making them really easy to identify them later. These are like regular adjustment layers in Capture One, incorporating both the editing tools used to achieve the effect and the mask created by the Style Brush as you applied it to the image.
04 Modifying Style Brush adjustments
You’re not stuck with the edit settings built into the Style Brush. With the Style Brush adjustment layer selected, you can use all the regular editing tools to change the look. For example, here I decided the sky lacked color, so I’ve increased the Saturation value.
05 Modifying Style Brush masks
Just as you can modify the Style Brush adjustments, you can also change the mask you created with the brush. Here, I decided I wanted a smoother gradation in tone between the sky and the horizon line, so I selected the linear gradient mask tool and used that to replace the mask created by the brush.
06 More Style Brush adjustments
You might want to apply multiple Style Brush adjustments as you work towards your finished image, and that’s exactly what I’ve done with this photo. I wanted to lighten the middle ground to make the picture brighter and more vivid, so I used the Dodge (Brighten) brush on this area.
However, this doesn’t quite achieve the brightening effect I wanted, so now I have a choice. I can either use the Capture One adjustment tools to modify and strengthen the effect I’ve just created, or I can simply switch to another tool to brush on further adjustments over the same area. That’s what I chose to do. I don’t mind that the masked area might be slightly different each time – in fact this can help blend in your adjustments more subtly.
So here I’ve swapped to the Brightness (+) Style Brush and painted over the middle ground area again. One Style Brush doesn’t replace or overlay another – they have a cumulative effect, which is just what I want.
I also decided this part of the image needed more color, so I selected the Saturation (+) Style Brush and painted over it again. This area is now looking rich, warm and sunlit, which is the effect I wanted. There’s just one more thing I want to do.
I swapped to the Contrast (+) Style Brush here to brush across the base of the image to add some depth and weight. By using Style Brushes on this image I’ve added contrast, color and light just where I want it and I’ve been able to blend it in far more subtly than would have been possible with AI masking.
Dodging and burning sample 2
Here’s another dodging and burning example. For this abstract seascape/landscape I decided I needed to intensify the sky with the Deep Sky brush, lighten up the middle ground with the Dodge (brighten) brush and increase the contrast of the foreground detail with. the Contrast (+) brush. I finished off by using the Saturation (+) brush to add more color to the sand.
Dodging and burning sample 3
Here’s a third example. For this shot I decided I needed to recover some of the bright highlights in the sky with the Highlights (recover) brush, lighten up the stern of the boat with the Dodge (brighten) brush and add some depth and texture to the concrete at the base of the image with the Contrast (+) brush. I also used the Add Detail brush to bring out the textures and details in the red shed in the background, the brick wall to the left and the boat itself.
I consider Style Brushes to be one of the strongest editing tools in Capture One because they let me edit images in a way that is, for me, far more intuitive. They let me blend in adjustments in different regions both subtly and simply, and can often replace global editing adjustments completely. Sometimes, fixing a just couple of parts of an image can transform it completely.
I started out in black and white photography where dodging and burning in the darkroom was part of the process. With Capture One Style Brushes and I can use the same dodging and burning techniques on color images too!
