Dodge & Burn Skin Retouching Tutorial in Photoshop 2020

dodging burn is the best method for natural skin retouching results using Photoshop in this video we're gonna break down dodge and burn and learn how to brighten and darken specific areas to even out tonal transitions and learn how to use global dodging burn to give your images that three-dimensional pop let's go ahead and break it down and cover todo el pelo I think it hit my mic so before we get into how to make the Dodge and burn layers we're gonna take a look at where you should specifically be dodging and burning and analyze a few images so this is the before and then this is the after when we're selectively darkening and brightening specific areas using the brush tool let's look at another image where once I've set up my helper layers this is what it's going to look like when we do the Dodge brightening and eveing evening out the tones here so we got areas that are bright that we can then lighten up a little bit so that these tones kind of have a natural flow so this is the after and then using the global to give it that little 3-dimensional pops let me take off that helper layer and this is the before and then the after let's take a look at another image and it's important to understand that each image is going to be different when you're setting up your helper layers so let's take a look at this one this is the before so here you can see that there are some areas and I'm gonna mark it in red so let's go in this image that's market in red where I would be brightening up and then what's in blue was where I would be darkening so here if i zoom in you're gonna notice that right here there are some inconsistencies here in the skin we have a bright area then it goes to dark then it goes to bright and I would be brightening up these areas here with the brush tool and we're gonna get to that in a little bit same thing here I would be brightening up this area this area this area right here what darken it so we can even it out and let's come back to the bright so whatever you see in red is areas that I would beam brightening up now I'm not gonna go through the whole thing because it's gonna take forever but I think you get the general idea of where I would be brightening and darkening specific areas so I'm gonna go ahead and take that off and let's take a look at the after so after seeing that you should seem that right here this is the after sub before I want you to look at the tonal areas that are off a little bit and noticing how with dodge and burn I'm smoothing out okay let's take a look at one more image we're gonna zoom in here and the reason why we make it black and white is so that it's easier to see where these areas need improvement this is the before and then this is with the local dodge and burn look at the transition that we're gonna see here see how it's kind of all bunched up here different types of tones and then smoothing it out and the after so before and then after and then with the glow boom so let me go ahead and take off the black and white so you guys can see that I'm gonna zoom out and let's take a look at the before and then after so now that we've seen a couple of images and seeing how dodge and burn can help with the skin retouching I'm gonna show you how to actually set up the layers and I'm gonna be giving away a free action so you don't have to worry about making this but I am gonna show you the process just so you know what's going on with the action so I'm gonna go ahead and delete this little folder here and I'm gonna go ahead and make the Dodge and burn action myself so here I'm gonna go to the adjustment layer panel then I'm gonna go to curves and that's the method I use there's also the 50% gray which I use sometimes but I mainly use the curves method so I'm gonna go to curves here and what you're gonna get is you're gonna get an adjustment layer and then this white layer mask I'm gonna rename this to dodge now remember Dodge just to lighten up areas so with this curve I'm gonna go here to the middle and I'm gonna drag it straight up right about here so right in the middle point between this little box and this box alright pop there looks fine and obviously when I brighten it up and I raise it up it does it to the entire image so I'm gonna press ctrl I'm so we can invert the mask so that we can brush in where we want to brighten so I'm gonna click the layer mask it's very important to click the layer mask and then press ctrl I to invert it so now it's black meaning it's not showing up we're gonna go ahead and make another one by going back to curves we're gonna now bring this down so we can set up the darken and same thing we're gonna put it like a ride in the middle point here and we're gonna name this burn because this is the areas that we're gonna darken and we're gonna click the layer mask press ctrl I'm and then we're now going to set up the helper layers we saw in the other examples a while ago that we want the black and white so that we can really see and it can help assist us see where we need to be brightening and darkening up areas so in order to do that we're gonna go back to the adjustment layer we're gonna go to solid color and we're gonna go down here and type in eighty eighty eighteen that basically is 50% gray we're gonna hit OK and we're gonna change the blend mode to color we're gonna rename this to BW for black and white and right now if I just did black and white yeah I would be still be able to see some of these tonal areas that need to be adjusted but we need a little bit more assistance so we're gonna add another curves and this time we're gonna come up here into this little properties dialog box and we're gonna add like an S curve and by doing this this is gonna allow me to see these areas that I need to improve so it's gonna be very important throughout this video you're gonna see me adjusting this frequently so that I can see exactly where I need to be brushing in these areas so I'm going to double click on curves one and I'm gonna rename this to contrast so that's basically what we're doing when we're adjusting that specific curves ever is we're adjusting the contrast so it helps us visually see where we need be brushing in and it's very important to understand that each image is going to be different whether you shoot natural light studio or strobe this helped earlier this contrast is gonna be adjusted differently for image to image so for example with Alexandra it was adjusted differently Fernanda and then the one with deafening so keep that in mind that your results are gonna look different depending on your image so I'm gonna group all of these I'm gonna press shift and then grab everything control gene I'm gonna rename this to local D beam I'm gonna open the folder up and I'm gonna group the helper layers let me drag this one in there we go and we're gonna name this helper layer boom so there we go so now we have it set up we have our helper layer that I can turn off with the eyeball we can also with this adjustment layer adjust the blend mode now this is super important this is like a pro tip here you can change it to overlay multiply and also darken and those blend modes will give you a different effect so I love to use overlay I know my friend Marco loves to use multiply and that one can be helpful and it's gonna be different depending on the way your eye see things so on this specific photo I think multiply looks the best so play around with the blend modes and that can be an extra assistance for you guys so once I have that set up and remember that I'm gonna give you an action the action is gonna run and it'll have all of these little layers setup is the first thing that you're gonna want to do is you're gonna want to go to the contrast layer and basically adjust this contrast to seem where these areas need improvement and that's the first thing that you want to do is you want to start identifying okay where do I need to start you know lightening up areas what do I need to start darkening up areas because we want this kind of nice even transitions throughout the skin so what I like to do is I like to start off with Dodge so I'm gonna click inside of the layer mask which is black I'm gonna get the brushed and we're gonna set up the brush settings so what I like to use is a hundred percent opacity one percent flow and I'm also going to make sure that I have the enable the brush style airbrush style and then also the pen pressure now I also use a Wacom tablet now this is super important at least for my workflow some people prefer to use a mouse method but I highly encourage you guys to get one of these and invest in one it's gonna pay off now that I have opacity 100 and flow at 1% and if you don't know what flow basically means is let me put it like at 50% flow basically it's gonna brush in 50% of this white tier because remember we set it to black when I brush with white it's gonna reveal that effect wherever I brush so obviously brushing at 50% is it gonna bring back that curve that we set up earlier and bring up that brightness and obviously that's way too much that looks terrible so that's why I like to set it up to 1% so that I can kind of slowly build this up so I'm gonna make sure I'm clicked on Dodge because remember the Dodge is gonna brighten it up areas I'm gonna zoom in and it's important that you start off zooming maybe around 100 to 300 because the more you zoom in at the very beginning it's gonna cause problems so right here I can see that I have an area that I want to fix so I'm just slowly brushing with a pretty decent lean large brush and I'm kind of just getting a general base on where I want to start fixing these transitions so I'm looking for the dark areas and trying to figure out if I can blend it and basically blend that exposure so it's all nice and even and because I'm set at the 1% flow I'm able to kind of build this up and just with a couple of clicks let's look at the before and after so if I click this eyeball on Dodge this is the before and then the after let's take off the helper layer so before and then the after okay go ahead and turn that back on I'm going to go ahead and zoom in just a little bit more now and what I like to do is I like to focus on just one area so right now as I'm setting up my contrast I'm setting it specifically for the forehead and we're focusing on the Dodge so I'm gonna go back to my helper layer my contrast and remember that we're gonna be constantly adjusting this and dragging this so that we can figure out and make it easier for us as we're doing the Dodge and burn process so I'm looking for the darker areas with the Dodge and I'm just slowly brushing it in and evening out these areas now it's gonna take some time for you guys to get used to finding these areas and knowing if you're doing it too much it's gonna take a lot of patience and it's gonna take a lot of practice so so far I'm gonna tick off the helper layer again and let's take a look at the before and then the after so before and after now I'm noticing that there's some bright areas here so now I'm gonna focus on the burn and I'm gonna try a different blend mode so let's maybe go to darken let's see how dark and works let me see if darken would look good with this and it does you see now I really get to see these white areas that are a little bit too bright and now I'm gonna go into burn and I'm gonna even out those areas so now I'm darkening up the exposure so it kind of meets the same type of exposure and that's why this tablet helps out you can be a little bit more precise and if you don't have a tablet I apologize if using a mouse you can definitely still do a great job I believe my friend Francisco Hernandez fjh I think he still uses a mouse and he does a great job at dodging burn so you can still get great results using a mouse and so once again I'm just kind of darkening up these little areas and I'm probably gonna be saying the same thing over and over again so I'm sure but at the end of this tutorial you'll really kind of understand it so let's take a look at the before here so before and after it before and then after let me take this helper layer off let's go ahead and zoom out control - and let's look at what we've done so far just on the forehead and you'll notice that the transitions are looking nice and smooth on the forehead now next thing I want to focus in on is this area here so even without the help of layer I can already tell that this right here is already too dark and then this transition it goes from like really light to this awkward like middle tone and then dark so I want to fade that off a little bit so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go back to my Dodge I'm gonna go back to my contrast cuz when I set up the contrast I was really focusing on the forehead and now I can't really see it now so I'm gonna kind of reset this you can reset it by clicking this little arrow here this kind of upside down arrow and I'm gonna reset it and now I'm gonna set it so that I can really see the inconsistencies in this specific area so remember that you're always using the helper layer to help guide you in specific areas that you're working with it's not I leave it there set to that same area the whole time and I'm just dodging burning with that specific setting so I'm adjusting it so that I can seem this little area and I think it looks pretty good now so I'm gonna go to dodge and instead of getting a small brush and kind of evening out I'm gonna get a bigger brush so it'll get a easier transition just like this and because we're at that 1% flow it should be doing a good job of evening out these areas now it's very very very important that as I'm doing this I'm not removing the natural shadow completely that's supposed to be there okay so like let me I'm going to let me mark it here so I don't lose my my place here but let me show you an example of what not to do so I'm gonna come here we have a natural shadow here I don't want to come over here and completely get rid of it like this because then it's not going to look right so if I take the helper layer off and now I've completely got rid of that little area there okay and I brightened it up too much so what I want to do is I just want to blend it I'm gonna come back to it and I'm still gonna blend it just a little bit more making sure that I still preserve that shadow now there's some areas here that I know I'm gonna want to burn because they're a little bit lighter so I'm gonna go in here and I'm gonna add a little bit of burn a little bit of burn here too as well and if you guys look up makeup tutorials on contouring it'll show you how to add three-dimensional shape to your photos using Dodge and burn so I'm gonna kind of darken up this area a little bit right there so let's take a look at it now so I'm gonna take off the helper let's take a look at the before and then the after smoothing out that transition I think that looks good let's look at the burn and let me zoom in because I know it's gonna be kind of hard to see probably on YouTube when the compression and stuff so before and then the after on the burn and then the Dodge before and then the after so let's look at the over all thing before and after and I think that that's looking pretty good as far as the forehead okay now let me take a look at it again the contrast I do have some areas over here that I'm noticing they need to blend a little bit so I'm going to switch back to the dodging and this is why some people take a long time with the Dodge and burn process is that you can get great results if you really take your time and look at everything and clean things up now it's important to understand too that you do not need to go pixel by pixel and get everything and spend two hours you can still get great results spending just 10 minutes five minutes just dodging and burning the main area so don't get a misconception of this that you have to spend an hour or two it really depends on your workflow and what you're trying to achieve so if you're wondering about me I spend anywhere from like 20 minutes to 30 minutes I know other people spend an hour to two hours and that's totally fine that's really dependent on the look you're trying to achieve so on this one I'm going a little bit slower so I apologize because I really want to explain to you guys and I'll be fast-forwarding some areas in a little bit so you know what I'll actually fast-forward this little section here so I'm gonna finish off the forehead I'm gonna fast-forward it and then we're gonna continue and then we're gonna jump into the cheek in a moment okay you now that I finished the forehead let's take a look at the before and after so this is the before and after so zooming out I think it looks pretty good I could probably take my time a little bit but I think you guys get the overall idea so now what I want to do is now that I've cleaned up the forehead I'm gonna come out to the cheek and make some adjustments here so I'm gonna reset my contrast layer clicking this little upside down arrow and now we're gonna adjust the tone curve so that we can see the areas that need to be adjusted so right about here now this one's a little bit difficult to see because there's some areas here and there's some areas that I need to darken so it's very important when you're doing the Dodge and burn is to understand where the light was coming from so I had my strobe light camera left so naturally there should be some shadow on the right side of the face so it's important that we keep the same physics of light going on so I'm gonna probably be doing more burn on this side of the face because there should naturally be a shadow so I'm gonna come over here and I'm gonna definitely in darken up some areas over here and I'm just getting my contrasts so that I can see it the best I can but I'm dark and I'm curious to see what overlay looks like overlay actually looks pretty good so remember that you want to experiment with the different blend modes and I'm gonna go to burn and I'm gonna come over here and you can see here we go out the darks and then it gets light light light so I'm gonna make sure that we even this out with the burn I guess on this side of the face it should be a little bit darker there should be some shadow I should say so that's why I'm using the burn here okay I'm gonna go ahead and zoom out control - this little area of this transition I don't like so I'm gonna actually dodge that a little bit there we go and then we'll jump in here so there's some areas right here that are a little bit below Chi so I'm going to go with the burn and I'm gonna darken that so it's a little bit more even and it's important to be zooming in and out and also to be adjusting the brush size constantly throughout this whole process so you're not just keeping the brush the same size so my left hand is on the keyboard pushing the left and the right brackets so that I can adjust the brush size so as I'm moving around I can kind of reset it as I see any areas that need to be adjusted now there are some areas as I look in here there are some areas that are a little bit too dark so I'm gonna go dodge and just match up the same type of tone that's in the surrounding area so I'm not eliminating it I'm just evening it out so that matches the same area then there's some areas here that need to be darkened a little bit and then you darken this area let me zoom out now you don't want to stay too zoomed in because if you zoom in too much that was like a mistake that I used to make a lot is zooming in too much and then you start to notice like oh crap I went a little bit too far there so that's why I like to zoom in and out a lot so let's kind of take a look at the before and after so before and then the after so it's looking pretty good looking pretty good on this side I do want to darken up some more areas over here it's a little bit difficult for me to see it so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna try a different blend mode let's see what multiply looks like that doesn't look good darken so let's go back to darken and I need to readjust this contrast so I can really help and it could really assist me because that's the purpose of it I don't go about right about there let me make sure I'd assume out I think I was doing too much there we go so now I'm going to come back and I don't want to spend too much time on the cheek because I think you guys get the general idea so I'm gonna start moving into some other areas and then I can always fast-forward coming back to this part so I'm gonna come back and get like the main areas because I think that's the point that I want you guys to see because a lot of people are always curious like where do you Dodge and burn and what are the areas that I should be focused in on so that's what I'm gonna do right now is I'm gonna go to the main areas and as I'm moving around start looking at the areas do you think that I should be dodging and burning so that you can start training your eye and as I mentioned at the beginning of the video it is gonna take some time for you to train your eye to see where you should be darkening and brightening up certain areas so I'm dodging here just to even out some of these tones this area looks pretty good so I'm just gonna kind of dodge it just a little bit smooth out some of these little areas right about there let's come back over here something with the chin and we'll get to the nose in a little bit and what I'm going to do because I know that this parts gonna take me some time is I'm gonna go ahead and fast forward and I'm really gonna focus on this area here focus on adjusting this area just a little bit more and then we'll kind of hone in on the nose area in a little bit you so I think we're gonna go ahead and finish off on the nose overall I like what I got now could I take some more time of course I could but overall I like the overall look that I'm getting with my Dodge and burn we're gonna focus on the nose and I'm gonna zoom in just a little bit more and the nose isn't actually that bad but I do want to just make sure that we can get it a little bit more even so I'm gonna go into my hoeper I'm gonna go to a multiply it's gonna look good on this one and it does absolutely and actually gonna bring this down there we go create that contrast now because the light was coming from camera left I'm actually gonna burn this instead of dodging I'm gonna spend a little bit more time burning this area and then maybe dodge this area just a little bit so I'm gonna go to let's start off with the burn and I'm gonna come in here so I hope you guys are understanding what the goal of the local dodging burn is because in a moment we're gonna get into the global and there we go that looks pretty good and we're gonna go to dodge can even some of these areas out in some of these areas you know they don't have to be like super perfect because I mean if you're gonna post on Instagram some people might not even see like these little pixel little areas pixel by pixel some there we go so let's zoom out let's take the helper there off so before and then D after I think it looks pretty good I'm pretty happy with that considering this is like my second time editing it so overall looks good now keep in mind when you do dodge and burn on the face you should also be doing it on the other parts of the body now I'm not gonna do this and in this tutorial because I don't want to take you know super long but keep that in mind I would then go into the other parts of the body and then doom the Dodge and burn you know what I'm gonna go ahead and do it but this I'm gonna go ahead and fast-forward it as I'm going through that throughout the body I'm kind of just going for the bigger areas of concern I'm not going to try to go pixel by pixel and make sure that it's perfect I'm just trying to get the bigger areas so that I can smooth it out the next thing that we're going to do is we're going to add some more curve adjustment layer so we're gonna do global dodge and burn so I'm gonna add some warm layers of the adjustments I'm gonna go here I'm gonna go to X exposure curves and we're gonna raise it up like we did earlier right about there it's fine I'm gonna invert it control I'm this will be this will be jean GG dodge and then I'll make another one and we're gonna go and bring that down and we're gonna name it G burn there we go so now the global what the Global's are gonna help us do this is what's really gonna add depth and really bring that 3d pop in the image so on that the global dodge I'm gonna now change my brush settings to about 4 or 5 so I'm gonna put 4 in this example and what I'm going to do is I'm gonna brush in naturally where the highlights already are now by going at 4 percent flow I'm gonna add a little bit more exposure so I have to be careful so I'm gonna make this a little bit large the forehead should have a little bit more light right here so I'm gonna maybe do like 2 or 3 clicks right there I'm gonna add a couple of clicks here cuz there should have been a little bit of light can I add here on the lips and I'm gonna go ahead and zoom in here and this is going to add a little bit more structure to the face once again and give it that depth that's going to help make the image come to life so I'm dodging this you know I'm gonna come into the other one and the only difference that I'm doing now is that I have them on separate layers and what's cool about that is because I have them on separate layers I can always adjust the opacity of I feel like if I went too far or delete it and the main difference is my flow has changed to 4% so now I'm gonna see a more of a dramatic effect so I'm gonna make sure these lips you want to make sure I'm on white so I wasn't seeing anything to make sure that these lips are getting dark I'm gonna add a little bit of shadow underneath the lip so I can make it pop a little bit and where else I'm gonna add just a little bit inside of the eye here so I'm gonna darken it up just a little bit all right there underneath the eye as well I'm gonna add a little bit just around and we talked about contouring at the beginning of the video and if you look up some contouring makeup tutorials I'm gonna darken up areas here to really bring out the cheekbone over here and I'm going with a bigger brush because I want this to be a nice soft effect and it's important that I'm darkening up every especially right underneath the chin I'm darkening up areas that are already naturally have those shadows all right oh there and let's take a look at what I've done so far so I'm going to zoom out let's look at the the burn so you know it's really making things pop a little bit let's go to the Dodge now and look at the lips I think the lips are the ones that really shined here okay I'm gonna zoom out I'm gonna add some shine to the hair this time though I'm gonna go about let's go 9% flow and I'm gonna make sure I'm on my dodge on the global and I'm gonna brush the hair only where it's already bright so I'm gonna go here I'm adding that nice little shine oh they're gonna brush here now I can be more precise but I think you guys are getting the general idea here only going into the areas that have that natural highlight already very good so let's take a look here I'm gonna merge these into a folder and let's take a look at the before and then the after so this is the glow look at that boom I'm gonna go back into the global I'm gonna go into the dodge now and I'm gonna go ahead and zoom in to the eyes now I can be really precise I can make a whole video dedicated to doing global with the eyes but I'm just gonna do a fast version of it so I'm gonna add a little bit more light into the little catch light there and I'm gonna add light coming in from the opposite side of the eye so I'm brushing in some exposure brushing exposure they're gonna brush them here get some there there we go I'm go ahead and zoom out I'm actually gonna darken up the eyebrows a little bit so I'm gonna go back to the burn and I'm just brushing in some darkness here at 9% flow so I get that really dramatic effect and let's take a look at the overall before and after so you zoom in here this is the before and then the after damn looks pretty good I'm happy with it keep in mind with this global adjustment I'm gonna go back to the global known I don't have to just use it on the body and I can incorporate this into my background as well so I'm gonna go to the burn and I'm gonna darken up certain areas like right here so that you can pop I'm gonna darken these up just even more and over here so since this is a close-up really don't have a lot of areas to work with but I can you know dodge and burn the clothes and other areas to really make things pop so consider those elements all right now I'm gonna show you a little trick here is if I want like a three-dimensional pop on the face one of the things that I also like to do is I like to add a curves adjustment and I like to bring up the curve just a little bit so we know that it's gonna brighten up the entire image I'm gonna change the blend mode actually to luminosity so I don't mess with the color so I'm gonna change it to luminosity and as I bring this up it's gonna be brightening up the exposure but it's brightening up image so obviously we don't want that I'm gonna double-click the layer in the blank area and what I should get is the layer styles so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tell Photoshop I don't want this in the dark areas I only want it in the specific highlights that I want so as I drag this underlying layer this little triangle here or arrow whatever you want to call it you're gonna notice that it should there we go that it should be bringing in that exposure and it's eliminating it from these tones here and I want to be very precise I only want it to be bright in these general areas here but the problem is is right now it's very sharp so I'm gonna hold alt and grab half of this little triangle and then drag it so I can fade it just a little bit so I like to add this into my photos so I get that three-dimensional pop now right now it's too much so I'm gonna go to the opacity and then bring this down I want it to be very very very very subtle don't start acting cute and adding this and then the opacity ins too much start to look fake so darn that cute I'm gonna bring it down to like maybe sixty five so let me click it the before after I still think it's too cute here so I'm actually gonna bring it down 45 nope now I'm gonna even bring it down even more we're gonna go about 35 okay each image is gonna be different depending on the settings but right there I think it looks pretty good okay so I'm gonna go ahead and zoom out actually now I'm gonna do min I want to show you where exactly I was brushing so let's take a look at the overall image I want to say it's pretty much done I'm happy with it once again I can take my time I could do more if I wanted to but you guys get the general idea so let me start off let me take off this one let's start off with the Dodge so let's see I'm gonna hold alt on the layer mask and I'm gonna click here and this is where I had lightened up areas so by clicking out it'll show you where exactly I was brushing in let's take a look at the burn so this is all the areas that I burned let me go into the global noun these are the areas that I brightened these are the areas that I darkened and then we had our little 3d extra little pop with the curbs there so let's take a look at the overall before and after I'm going to group everything so this is the before and then the after okay now if you guys stayed and saw this whole video my loyal fans that are watching right now because I know it's it's a long video but if you're watching right now put a comment below and if you all my actions the first five people that comment that salt up until this point I'm gonna give you them for free I'm gonna email them to you so if you're watching right now send me an email type in the comment tell me what your email is and I'll send you my actions all of my actions for free and now let's look at the overall before-and-after so here we got the before and then the after and that concludes our tutorial once you're done it's important to remember that now the editing process isn't over yet this is the fun part where now you get into color grading your image so this is let's take a look at the final image now when it's color graded and added all kinds of special effects that maybe I added with color balance selective color and curves so keep that in mind after you do your dodge and burn process now if you're curious and you're looking at it right now you're like I step out though I want to know how you do color great I want to see the other steps well relax relax I have other tutorials I have three other full edit tutorials I have ones on skin tones I have one on selective color on how I color grade so check out the rest of my youtube channel if you enjoyed this video if you're new to the channel and I appreciate you guys checking out my my tutorial and I'll see you guys on the next video peace out

Channel: Eli Infante

Views: 50,082

Keywords: Photoshop 2020, Photoshop Tones, Photoshop Retouching, Color Grading, Photoshop Beginner Tutorial, Photoshop, Photoshop Tutorial, Portrait Retouching, Photoshop Portrait Edit, Photoshop Full Edit, Photoshop Dodge and Burn, Photo skin retouching, Photo Editing, Skin Retouching, best skin retouching photoshop, Dodge and Burn, Dodge & Burn 2020, skin softening, high end skin retouching, contouring, Eli Infante

Id: DG3H52bLLf4

Length: 39min 30sec (2370 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 10 2020