articles/Landscape/dodgeburn-page2

Paul Gallagher dodge & burn - part 2 of 1 2 3

by Paul Gallagher Published 01/04/2006

At this point we need to return to the image and begin adjusting the sky using the channels and selections made so far. Switch from the "Blurred" channel to the default RGB channel; then click the layers tab on the layers pallet. This will return you to the original image, with the marching ants depicting the active selection (FIG5). Then click the new Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the layers pallet and select Curves.

At this point the marching ants will disappear and a Curves dialogue box will appear. Adjust the tonality of the sky by dragging sections of the straight line. If you look at the axis of the curves' dialogue box you can see the greyscale from white to black. Therefore if you pull the line in the corner of the box closest to the black downwards it will darken the darkest pixels predominantly over the lightest pixels further away from your drag point (FIG6).

You can place a number of points on the curve to alter the contrast along tonal range to varying degrees but it is worth starting with fewer control points. As a general rule smooth curves work best.

Now that we have made our initial adjustment of the sky we should return to the Channels pallet and control click the "Blurred" alpha channel. This will reload the selection of the sky and if we then return to the Layers pallet and press control-shift-I this will invert the selection and enable us to begin working on the beach area of the image (FIG7).

We can now press the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers pallet, select Curves and make the desired adjustments on the foreground. What this does is enable us to work on both halves of the image with virtually no overlaps or ugly adjustment lines in the image.

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