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PSC06: Burn/Dodge
Why Burn and Dodge?
Burning and dodging can help you adjust the lighting of your scene during post processing by brightening up areas that are too dark, or darkening areas that are too bright. This will also help you improve your composition because the way a scene is lit, will have some impact on how the viewer's eye is guided through the image.
Also if you ever wondered how some people get those dramatically dark skies in their images, Burning is one of the methods to achieve that.
An almost ancient technique
Burning and dodging is a technique that has been used by photographers, ... well, basically almost since the beginning of photography itself. In the good old days of enlarging pictures from negatives onto photo paper, this technique would be used by photographers to achieve thust that: to darken some areas of the image and make other areas brighter.
Enlarging an image in the traditional photo lab is similar to projecting a slide to a wall. You put the negative into a projector, the so called enlarger, and then you project the image onto light sensitive photo paper. Photo paper is not as light sensitive as the film in your camera, so the exposure takes anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. The longer the light hits the paper, the darker the image gets in the end. Now by masking off certain parts of the image during parts of the exposure time, you can lighten it up in those spots and by exposing other areas longer, you can darken the image.
So, burning means to get more light onto the paper, which will darken it, whereas dodging means to mask light off the paper in order to lighten things up.
In the digital world
Let's move this into the digital domain. As opposed to the analog method that involves photo paper and chemicals for development, we have a few big advantages by going digital. We can still burn and dodge, but we actually see what we are doing, whereas the method in the dark room meant that you couldn't see the actual result until after you developed the final enlarged image.The tools
In Photoshop, 
Burn and Dodge are two separate tools that you can find in the Tool Box right next to the Sharpen and Blur tools.
Using the tools
Using the Burn and Doge tools is easy, just select them from the Tool Box and paint away on your image. You can control the strength of the tools by changing the "Exposure" value the Options Bar, and you can even change the brightness range that they are applied to in the picture by switching between Highlights, Midtones and Shadows.
Burn and Dodge in Action
Before...
... and after the Burn/Dodge treatment.
The smart method
The backdraw of this method is that once you did the burning and dodging, you are sort of stuck with your changes, so here's a method that will let you to do your burn/dodge treatment in a different way, so that you can always go back and change things if you want to.
Add a new layer to your image by clicking the "New Layer" button at the bottom of the layer palette, but while you do so, keep the Alt (PC) or Option (Mac) key pressed. This will bring up a helpful dialog where you can now make a few very important settings:
1. Make sure the box next to "Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask" is checked. This will make sure your burn/dodge treatments will only show on the layer we're working on.
2. Set the mode to "Overlay"
3. Check the box next to "Fill with Overlay-neutral color (50% gray).
The way the "Overlay" blending mode works is that it will brighten up the image if there's a value brighter than 50% gray, and it will darken an image if it is darker than 50% gray. And we can use that to our advantage here.
Burn/dodge layer switched off ...
... burn/dodge layer enabled ...
.. and the burn/dodge layer on its own.
Select a normal brush with soft edges, and then in the option bar at the top of the window, reduce its opacity to 10%. This will let you gradually paint in your changes.
Reset the colour swatches to black and white by pressing the D key.
Make sure you have the newly created layer selected and then just paint away. Wherever you paint black, the image will turn darker, and wherever you paint white, it'll lighten up the image. If you find that you want to go back, you can paint over the offending area with 50% grey and it'll restore the image to the brightness it had before.
For me the biggest advantage of using this method is that I can switch the burn/dodge layer off and on in order to see a before and after of my picture which will help me decide if I have overdone it or if I'm spot on.