Burning & Dodging with an Overlay Layer Cheat Sheet

A - Make an Overlay Layer F – Burn or Dodge 1) At the top of your screen, go to Layer > New 8) To burn, darken, select black paint. Layer. Then, click, hold, and drag 2) In the New layer window: 9) To dodge, lighten, select white paint. • Change Normal to Overlay Then, click, hold, and drag. • Select Fill with Overlay-neutral color (50% gray). G – Not All at Once 3) Click OK. Don’t attempt to brush the entire area all at once. B – Make Extras Click, hold, and drag. You often need more than one of the above layers. Let go of the mouse button. 4) To copy the layer, press Ctrl + j (Windows) or Repeat the above. Cmd + j (Mac) several times. H - Mistakes C – Select the Brush Tool Use 50% gray to erase mistakes. 5) Select the Brush tool on the left side of your screen. Click More in the lower-right corner of your screen. D – Feather the Brush Click the Color tab at the top of the More window. 6) Feather the brush. Select 50% gray in the Color Swatches window. E – Use Black or White Paint Then, click, hold, and drag on the area that you want to erase. 7) Make sure the foreground and background colors in the lower-left corner of your screen are black and I - Opacity white. 11) To reduce the amount of dodging or burning, If not, press d or click the tiny black-and-white lower the opacity of the layer. boxes icon. Opacity is located at the top right of the layers stack. Press x, or click the tiny double-arrow icon, to J - Rename change from one color to the other color. 12) A best practice is to rename the layer.