Hi there, this is Unmesh and today I'm going
to share with you how to use Dodging & Burning to retouch skin in Photoshop. This is one of the most commercially used
techniques used only by high end professionals. And there's a reason for it. First of all, it takes a lot of time. Secondly, it takes a lot of practice. However, the kind of results it creates is
absolutely worth it. Because when we are dodging and burning, we
are simply brightening and darkening and doing nothing else and therefore, the skin texture
does not get affected at all. However, since this is all manual, and it's
just like painting, we might need a little bit of practice, but once you get the hang
of it, it can get a little addictive because it's such an amazing technique. I hope you enjoy this. So without any further ado, let's get started. Back in the
magical world of Photoshop, and if you go ahead and download this for and follow along,
check the links in the description. So have a look at this. The first thing we need to do is to remove
the blemishes, no matter what skin retouching technique you're using, even if you're using
Frequency Separation. It will really help if you remove the blemishes
and the wrinkles in the beginning, because then you won't have to deal with them later. So, let's say you're using Frequency Separation,
you won't have to remove the blemishes, both, in the texture layer and the color layer. Or let's say you're using Dodging & Burning,
you don't have to extensively paint over that blemish and, maybe, correct the color later,
it can get a little too complex. So, it becomes very easy if you remove these
blemishes, these lines and wrinkles in the beginning. And my favorite way of doing that is by using
the Regular Healing Brush tool. There are lots of ways of doing it, useful
in different scenarios. You can watch this complete guide on removing
blemishes if you like. So, let's begin by creating a brand new layer
by clicking on the New Layer button right there. Once we have done that, select the Regular
Healing Brush Tool, not the Spot. The Spot makes it a little soft. The Regular - the second one. Select that and all we have to do is this,
hold the Alt key or the Option key, click to take a sample from a nearby area and then
paint over that blemish. If it's not doing it the right way, just make
sure that your Sample is Current & Below and the Blend Mode is Normal. Also, if you want to see the blemishes more
clearly, there's a Check layer that you can create at the top. So for that, you can click on the Adjustment
layer icon and then choose Black & White right there, and all you got to do here, now this
can be a little straining to the eyes, just decrease the Reds. Have a look, all of those blemishes and those
irregularities show up. Now you can also increase the Yellows to make
it a little more easier for you to see. Just play with the slider. Stop at the point where it looks okay. And then let's get back to layer one. We can actually name it Blemishes. Double click on the text to name it Blemishes,
fine. Let's just zoom in and remove them one by
one. Hold the Alt key or the Option key, click
to take a sample, remove. Now, we don't want to sample the Black & White,
so always make sure that the sample is Current & Below, not All Layers. That way it will also sample the Black & White
at the top. A good way is to only remove the blemishes
that is distracting to you, if you want to keep things natural and for that, I would
highly suggest to keep your image at 100%. So, if you press Ctrl or Command + -, see
at the top, it shows 100% right there, keep it at 10% zoom, it will help you see the blemishes
which are distracting, and then begin removing them. Sometimes what happens, when we are totally
zoomed in, we tend to overdo things. You want to avoid that. You can also do it without the Check layer
in case you only want to remove the ones which are distracting. So I've given you both the options. It's your choice, whatever you want to do. So I'm going to make the process a little
faster so that you don't have to sit through it all. Now keep in mind, we don't have to remove
all the blemishes because that way it won't look realistic then. Have a look at the cheek. These blemishes make her look natural. Have a look at the nose, a little bit of freckles
here and there. It makes her look natural. Only the distracting ones are the ones that
we need to take away. Now that we have removed the blemishes, it's
time for us to start with Dodging & Burning. But before we do anything like that, let's
do some preparation for Dodging & Burning. And what I mean by preparation is, we need
to create some additional check layers just to make sure that the Dodging & Burning goes
smoothly and accurately. The first one, of course, is taking the colors
away. We don't want to be distracted by colors. And the way to do that naturally is by clicking
on the Adjustment layer icon and choosing Solid Color. Now you can choose any color - Black, White,
Grey, anything that has zero saturation, right. I'm going to choose Grey or Black, anything,
doesn't really matter. Hit OK. Change the Blend Mode of this layer from Normal
to Color. That takes away all the colors. Now this is absolutely different from just
decreasing the Saturation all the way to the left. If you are more interested in how is it different,
please check out this video. The second thing we need to do is to create
a Curves Adjustment layer to make the unevenness of the skin even more pronounced. So first of all, we're going to click on that
hand right there and any dark area of the skin, we're going to click and drag it down,
just like that. And then work the curves to make sure their
well pronounced. All right, at this moment, I can clearly see
what is dark and what is bright. That really helps you with your Dodging & Burning
process. Okay, you can always come back to it and change
it for different areas specifically. So once we have done these two, the third
thing we need to do, and this is the most crucial, sometimes when we are zoomed in too
much in Dodging & Burning, we get too much concentrated into every single pixel and we
do it kind of too much, especially when we are a beginner in Dodging & Burning. We get too caught up painting over these single
pixels that we spend hours and hours, sometimes six to seven hours. And then we zoom out and see that something
is wrong with it or the skin looks absolutely smooth. So to avoid that, we need to add some blur
to it. By adding the blur, we won't get caught up
by those singular pixely textures. Alright, and the way to do that is by simply
creating a Merged layer at the top of Blemishes. And for that momentarily, let's turn off these
Check layers. All right, and now let's select the Blemish
layer and press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E on Windows / Command + Option + Shift + E on
a Mac. This creates a merged layer of everything
that you see on the canvas and the top - Stamp Visible layer. We can just name this Reference Blur. Before we add blur to it, we want the ability
to be able to change the value of blur later. And that is why let's convert this into a
Smart Object. Go to Filter and then Convert for Smart Filters,
hit OK. Now let's add some blur to it. Go to Filter - Blur, and then Gaussian Blur. Blur of 2 is fine. All those pixely details are gone. Before - after. Now we can easily Dodge & Burn. And once we are done, we can actually turn
off or delete this Reference Blur layer. To start with Dodging & Burning, first of
all, let's create Dodge and Burn layers. And for that we're going to use our Curves
Adjustment layers. Click on the Adjustment layer icon and then
choose Curves and click on the middle and take it up just a little. This is for dodging, and let's name this layer
Dodge. Now select the mask and press Ctrl or Command
+ I to invert the mask. Now the mask is completely black, which means
the effect is showing up nowhere. Wherever we paint white, the effect will show
up. Let's create a copy of this one, this Curves
Adjustment layer, and let's name this Burn. This is for darkening. And this time, double click on the symbol
to open up the Properties. Just take it down. So, we have the Dodging & Burning layers set
up. Let's turn on these check layers. We can actually make a group of both of them. Let's turn them on and select the first one,
hold the Ctrl or Command, select the second one, Ctrl or Command + G. And we can name this D and B Check Layer. All right, and we can always switch it on
or off to check our image. We have the reference ready right there. And let's start with dodging. Click on the mask of the Dodge layer. Take the brush, and this is very crucial,
select the Soft Round Brush right here. Now, decrease the flow to 1% or 2%. If you're a complete beginner, let's start
with 1%. If you're little bit experienced, or you think
you can handle it, set it to 2. All right. It's just the intensity of the brush. Now, zoom in to 100%, it's very important,
100% or less. You can of course go ahead and zoom in a little
200% or 300% and then do it, but you don't want to lose the originality, the complete
structure of the image, right. To have the structure in mind, it's important
that we only dodge and burn when zoomed out. You can zoom in and do some little correction,
that's okay. But, it's important that we are zoomed out
at least 100% or less. So let's zoom out at 100%, take the brush,
make sure the foreground color is white and then just start painting on an area which
you think is darker than the surroundings, is distracting and making the skin uneven. As I can see, this area is a little too dark. This area as well. There's a patch of dark in there, this aera,
there's a lot of patches. So we're going to just paint over them, just
like that. See how easy that was? Let's have a look at the before and after. Here's the before, here's the after. You see the difference, just in a couple of
seconds? Before - after before - after. And that's what we have to do throughout the
entire image. Now, there's going to be places where you
want to darken stuff. And for that, you might have to go to the
Burn mask and then simply paint with white. So, let's see, we want to darken this area,
just paint with white. Make sure you're zoomed out to 100%. Now let's have a look at the before and after. Here's the before, here's the after. See that bright patch is now gone. Before - after, before - after. That's how we're going to do it. Now I'm going to make the process a little
faster just with dodging, so that you get an idea of what I'm doing. This is going to take a little time. Whenever you need to check the image without
the blur, all you gotta do is to turn off Reference Blur. Whenever you need to check without the Check
layer, just turn it off. Let's have a look at the before and after. Here's the before, here is the after. Let's turn on both of them - the Reference
Blur and Dodging & Burning check layer. Anytime you feel like you've painted a little
extra, for example, let's have paint a little extra over there. You can go back by pressing Ctrl + Z / Command
+ Z. If you're using CC 2018 and below, you will
have to hold Ctrl + Alt + Z / Command + Option + Z, just to go back, or if you think you
have partly painted too much, you can always erase this by changing the foreground color
to black. Press X to toggle the foreground and the background
color and then you can paint black back in that area to subtly erase it. So those are the things we can do. Let's resume dodging. Now as you can see, there are some bright
patches on the forehead. Time for us to do a little bit of burning. So, let's move to the mask of the Burning
layer right there and then let's start darkening these areas. Our goal here is to just even out the skintone. To check the overall before and after, you
can also make a group of the Dodging & Burning layer. Select the Dodge layer, hold the Ctrl or Command,
select the Burn layer and then press Ctrl or Command + G And we can name this Dodging
& Burning. All right. Let's have a look at the complete before and
after. Let's open up the group. Here's the before, here's the after. Just look at the forehead. Isn't that such a drastic difference? And so natural. If I turn off the Dodging & Burning check
layer and the Reference Blur, have a look at the forehead, here's the before, here's
the after. Look at it, all the skin texture is still
intact and every unevenness is gone. There's a lot to do. So let's resume working on it. Now here's something we need to do. Have a look at these areas. There are some blemishes that we want to keep. So for this area, I want to keep the blur
a little higher so that I don't get confused by these blemishes. Alright, so for that, we're going to go down
to Reference Blur and just simply increase the value of Gaussian Blur by double clicking
on it and then let's choose something like 5, let's go for 9. That looks nice right here. Don't focus on the forehead. I know it looks strange at the moment. But let's get back dodging and just brighten
up these areas. And then we're going to change it back to
2 again, once we fix this. Now, let's decrease the blur and fix this
in detail. Set it to 2. Let's get back to dodging and let's fix this. Let's increase the radius of the Gaussian
Blur back to 2, so that we can work on the details. Let's get back to Dodge. For this we need to zoom in just a little
bit. Let's make sure that the Opacity is that 100. Now, have a look at the area under the nose. To be able to dodge and burn over there we
need to see the details, but because of the Curves that we had added for the check layer,
we cannot see it so clearly. So we need to modify that curves, just that. Let's open up the Dodging & Burning check
layer and the to open up the Properties of the Curves by double clicking on the symbol
of the Adjustment layer. And let's make the darks a little brighter
to be able to see the details. Alright, this looks fine. Now let's get back to dodging and let's work
on this area. Now when I look at it, if I zoom out a little
bit, there is a little bit of darkness right over here that we need to work on. Let's first work on that. All right, now let's get to the nose. Zoom in 100%, that's fine. Now let's work over here. Now, let's make the curves dark back again
inside of the Dodging & Burning check layer so that we can see more details. All right, now let's get back to dodging and
burning. Now one of the things we need to keep in mind
when doing any kind of skin retouching is that we should never remove the smile lines. They should always be there. In order to retouch skin, we should not take
away the expression. A beautiful expression is way more important
than beautiful skin. Let me give you one more tip. When you're dodging and burning and you're
having difficulties painting in a certain angle, you can hold the R key. This opens up the Rotate tool momentarily
as long as you're holding the R key, then you can rotate it. And then when you release the R key, it gets
you back to the brush. If it doesn't get you back to the brush, you
can always press the B key which stands for the Brush tool, and then paint and when you
want to reset it, just simply hold the R key again and click on Reset View. As you can see, we are finished with Dodging
& Burning. I want you to have a look at the before and
after. But first, let us turn off these check layers
and the Reference Blur. So, turn off the Dodging & Burning check layer
and let's turn off the Reference Blur layer at the top, right there. And have a look, just brightening and darkening
using two layers of Curves, that's it, and masking. Look how much we have accomplished. Here's the before, here is the after. Isn't that a massive difference? Let me just zoom out and have a look. Here's the before, here's the after. The brightness has been matched with that
of the face, which is excellent. Now before we proceed to the next step, it
is very essential to look at the image with a different angle. And I mean that literally. Have a look. So let's turn on the Dodging & Burning check
layer and also turn on the Reference Blur. Hold the R key. This shows up the Rotate tool. Rotate it upside down. You're so used to looking at it face up straight,
that we might ignore the unevenness or the irregularities. This technique really helps us find out the
things that we might have missed. Now if you zoom in, have a look at this, this
area is a little dark. We didn't catch that before. Now zoom out and have a look at some other
areas. All other areas look fine, but I think that
this particular area has a little more darkness than it should. So, let's zoom in and fix that. Open up the Dodging & Burning layer, we just
need to dodge it. Select the Dodge layer, take the brush, Flow
2, everything is as it was. Now let's add some brightness to it. As simple as that. So, you can also read about this in many art
books. I think I was reading a book about Leonardo
da Vinci. And the book taught me this technique actually. He was obviously talking about paintings and
stuff, but you can apply this to retouching as well. Alright, that looks pretty okay. Let's have a look at the before and after. Here's the before, here's the after. We fixed that. Maybe a little bit more. Right there. Alright, let's zoom out and have a look. Any other areas that we need to fix? Right here. I think there's a little more darkness. We can easily fix that. Not a big issue. But anyway, let's fix it. There we are. Okay. All right. Let's zoom out and have a look. This looks pretty fine. Now, this can get pretty too much sometimes. Sometimes you get caught up and every time
you look at the image, you see something you need to fix, like I'm seeing right now. If you take a break and come back to the image,
you'll see all of the things that you have missed. In this area, I see a little bit too much
brightness. So let's zoom in, go to the Burn layer, burning
means darkening, And then let's paint that area. Make sure you're zoomed out, about 50%, maybe
100% is good, and just burn that area. Let's have a look, before - after. We fill that area up, and it looks fine now. All right, maybe this area as well. We need to dodge that. Let's go back. Let's go to the Dodge layer and let's dodge
it. Alright, that looks nice now. Zoom out and have a look. All right. Now that looks like wonderful skin. To reset the angle, all you have to do is
to hold the R key again or go to the Rotate tool and then click on Reset View and you
are good to go. All right. Now, let's turn off the Dodging & Burning
check layer and also you can delete the Reference Blur. I'm just going to keep it and turn it off. Alright, that's fine. Let's close the Dodging & Burning layer. So here's the before, here is the after. Look at the difference. Now the next step can be fixing the color,
because when we dodge and burn, there might be a little unbalance of color. Now, some of you might think, and this works
sometimes, that if you change the Blend Mode of these Curves Adjustment layer to Luminosity,
it won't affect the color. But to me, it doesn't work very well. It kind of desaturates the color it seems. So I'm going to try it for you. So if I simply change the Blend Mode of the
Dodge layer, have a look at the difference to Luminosity. You know, it sometimes works sometimes doesn't. Look at these areas. It just looks strange. So I avoid doing it. I always prefer fixing the color later and
keeping the Curves Adjustment layer at Normal. That way, it just looks normal. Alright, so I'm going to keep both of them
at Normal and then fix the color later. But before fixing the color, we're going to
fix the lips because there's a lot of cracks and I couldn't fix it with Dodging & Burning. So, let's create a brand new layer and we
can name that Lips. And we're going to use the good old Healing
Brush tool, the regular one. All right, and let's zoom in all the Alt or
Option, click to take a sample and paint over. Now if you want to see the preview in the
brush, go to Window, go to Clone Source and just check Show Overlay. That will you will see the overlay of the
sample that you took. So for example, if I take a sample from right
here, it'll show the overlay of what it's going to paint with. We need to make sure that we don't overdo
it, so let's zoom out a bit. Zoom in. We don't have to remove all the lines, but
the ones which do not look healthy. These lines are common. Let's have a look. All right, zoom out. See how that looks. Here's the before, here's the after. Is there any other line that isn't looking
great? Have a look at this, this irregularity, out
of the blue. Let's take it away. Now have a look, the lips look much cleaner. So here's the before, here's the after. So much more better, isn't it? Now we can go ahead and remove all these lines. All right, there we go. Let's have a look at the before and after
of just the lips. So, here's the before, here is the after. Fixed. If you want more naturality in here, you can
always decrease the Opacity and slowly and gradually increase it. But to me, 100% Opacity is fine. Now, I see a pattern right there. Whenever you're cloning or healing, you might
come across patterns and we need to take it away because it will give the viewer a definite
sign that this was retouched or cloned. So remove the line over there. We don't want to keep patterns. Okay. Now when I look at it, there is a line which
you can only see if you zoom out pretty well. So let's zoom in, and let's see if we can
fix that line. Alright, that looks wonderful. Now it's time for us to fix the color. Now to clear the confusion for you, I will
delete the Reference Blur layer, because we're going to add some more enhancements to it
and the Dodging & Burning and the Blemish removal, Check layers. Remove all of that. All we have done up until now is, first of
all, we have removed the blemishes, then did dodging and burning and corrected the lips. That's it. Now, let's correct the color. You won't believe it. But the color correction technique of the
skin is super obvious. All we have to do is to tell Photoshop to
change just the color. Have a look at this. If we simply create a new layer, and let's
name this Color Fix. All right, and now change the Blend Mode from
Normal to Color. That's it. Now color the area in the color it should
be. So you got to take the brush, and then make
sure in the Eyedropper tool, right, the sample sizes 11 by 11, or 5 by 5, not Point Sample. Because we don't want to take a sample of
a single pixel, that pixel might be a noise, that pixel might be a super dark area. If you want to take an average, if you choose
five by five or 11 by 11, it's going to take an average of 11 by 11 pixels, and then allow
you to paint with that color. It will just sample that color. Alright, so take 5 by 5 or 11 by 11. I'm going to choose 11 by 11 for this one. Take the brush and now all you got to do is,
have a look, in this area the color just doesn't look right, so I'm going to take a sample
from this area and paint over that area. As easy as that. Now, you cannot see anything. Why? Because the Flow is very low. Remember, we decrease the Flow too much. So increase the Flow back to 100, take a sample
and paint. See, we fixed that. Have a look at this. So here's the before, too much color in that
area. Here is the after. We fixed it. Now if you want, you can decrease the flow
to about 20% to keep things under control and not painting too much. So, for the other side, take the sample and
start painting slowly and gradually. All right, we fixed that as well. Before - after. I want you to especially look at the areas
that you had dodged and burned too much. Those areas will have a little bit of unbalance
of color. Have a look at this area. This area we had, I think, dodged or burned
too much. So there is an irregularity of color. So I'm going to take a sample from here, try
to paint there, see if it fixes that. Yes, it does. Fixed it. No problem. Similarly right here. See how easily we are fixing the color. Just take a sample of the right color and
paint over the wrong color. That's it. As you can see, there's a sudden red over
there. So I'm going to take a sample from here paint
over that fixed easy. Check for irregularities in other areas. Every other area looks fine to me. If you spot any other area, you can paint
over there. Alright. We have fixed to the color. Now this might be a very minute change but,
have a look. Here's the before, here's the after. Just look at these areas where we fixed it. Before - after. Look at this red area where we we fixed it. Before - after, before - after. Very minute correction, but very effective. Here as well, we can just take a sample and
paint over the bright spots if you want to color in those areas. Be a little careful as you paint. You can also decrease the Flow to about 5%
so that we don't paint so much. Okay, now let's come here. All right, let's zoom out and have a look. Here's the before, here's the after, before
- after painting. Now after we have fixed the color, the possibilities
are limitless. You can retouch the eyes, you can retouch
the hair, maybe retouch the lips. There are so many things you can do like Color
Grading or maybe select and mask and put it on a different background, and all of that
you can watch in these videos. There are tons of things we can do. There are some other videos linked in the
description as well. But that's how you can retouch skin, just
by using Dodging & Burning. Of course, you need to remove the blemishes
first for easier workflow. I hope this video helped you and if it did,
make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe,
ring the bell so that you, my friend, don't miss any other future tip, trick or tutorial. Before we end, let's do a quick little recap. First of all, create a brand new layer right
there and you can name that Blemishes and in that layer we just have to remove the blemishes
and the wrinkles and all of those things which will be difficult to remove while Dodging
& Burning. Once you have removed those, for this I actually
used the Regular Healing Brush tool, you can use whatever is your favorite, the Patch tool,
the Spot Healing Brush Tool, the Regular Healing Brush tool, there are lots of ways of doing
it. After you have removed the blemishes, we have
to create two layers, one for dodging and the other one for burning. For the dodge, all you have to do is to create
a Curves Adjustment layer, take it up and then create a black mask. Similarly for burning, do the opposite, take
it down. Now create some Check layers which will make
it easier for you to dodge and burn. In this case, I simply created a Solid Color
Adjustment layer and changed the Blend Mode to Color, so that it takes away all the colors,
and then added a Curves Adjustment Layer, increased the contrast, so that I could see
the unevenness a little better. And then you can just do Dodging & Burning. Now, to not get confused by those tiny little
fine textures in the skin, we can apply some blur to it. All we have to do is to create a Stamp Visible
layer at the top of the Blemish and just add a little bit of Gaussian Blur. And that's just for reference, which we called
here Reference Blur. And after that you can fix the lips, maybe
fix the color using the Color Blend mode. And that's pretty much it. The possibilities are limitless and things
you can do after this. We already have a ton of videos on that. You can check them out. The links are in the description. I would like to take this moment to thank
all these nice and amazing people for supporting this channel on Patreon and helping keep PiXimperfect
free for everybody forever. Thanks so much for your support. Thank you for watching. I'll see you guys in my next week. Until then stay tuned and make sure that you
keep creating.
