How to dodge and burn in Adobe Lightroom using filters and the adjustment brush

 

 

While dodging and burning is often considered within the context of editing in Adobe Photoshop, you can also dodge and burn inside of Adobe Lightroom. As photographer and educator Serge Ramelli showcases in his latest tutorial video below, by mastering dodging and burning techniques in Lightroom, you will be able to subtly adjust the brightness and darkness of your image to better guide the viewer through a given scene.

While Photoshop has dedicated dodge and burn tools, Lightroom has an adjustment brush, which you can set to brush many different image adjustments onto your scene, complete with the ability to change the strength and size of the brush. For dodging, Ramelli usually starts by setting the adjustment brush to add one stop of exposure and then he backs it down as needed. It's important to not go overboard with how much you brighten or darken your image. The idea is to create a natural-looking result. In the video below, Ramelli covers dodging and burning for both color and black and white images.

(Via Serge Ramelli Photography)