Dodging and Burning?

Barney

Barney

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Its just Photoshop HDR isn't it?

Ansel Adams would have been the world master at photoshop and many others would be saying he's just cheating and its not real photography and shots are over-processed. Like me.
The more I read about the darkroom processes the more I realise photoshop was a godsend for many.
 
Barney said:
Its just Photoshop HDR isn't it?
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No High Dynamic Range is not the same as Dodging and Burning, which of course you can do in Photoshop, Lightroom and other programs.

I haven't had a darkroom for many years, but it was a practice most printers would have used.
 
Ansel Adams did combine negatives and selectively develop which is similar to PS and HDR. It was not that unusual to replace skies in the darkroom era. We found in our club archives that one of the members gave a lecture on how to change a sky; this took place in 1928.

Dave
 
TBH D&B is one of the first things anyone printing should learn to do after they've sorted out the basics of print-making. No-one ever got it right in camera all the time, and it can make the difference between 'if only' and 'good picture'.

From what I know, few great pictures that we know can from straight prints, and it was normal to take your negs to a good printer in order to extract the full potential. Printing was a skilled, specialised art all its own.
 
I was always hopeless at B&W printing, and in ye olde dayes I shot mostly Kodachrome to eliminate darkroom work from the equation. I love it that these days, after digitising my B&W negatives, I can throw the whole Photoshop artillery at them. Nowadays I'm shooting more B&W film than I've ever shot in my life before.

So yep, Photoshop has been a godsend for me and I'll happily confess to being a rotten old cheat.
 
D&B while making black and white prints was a great pleasure and frustration in equal measure.

It was also very difficult to make multiple prints exactly the same as every one would be a bit different.

Look at the D&B maps from any of the great photographers/printers to see what they get up to.

Oh and don't forget being able to print areas of different contrast if using multigrade papers and filters - is that still a thing??

To see a masters work find a copy of this book - "Larry Bartlett's Black and White Photographic Printing Workshop"

D
 
swanseamale47 said:
Back in my film days I had a huge range of dodging and burning tools (home made) different sizes and shapes with wire handles hanging on my darkroom wall.
Having different shapes makes it easier to mask parts off or whatever.
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Including not-quite-right bits of prints cut to give the right shape of shadow on specific prints.
 
swanseamale47 said:
Back in my film days I had a huge range of dodging and burning tools (home made) different sizes and shapes with wire handles hanging on my darkroom wall.
Having different shapes makes it easier to mask parts off or whatever.
Click to expand...
So is that like the lasso tool in photoshop for isolating certain areas for specialist treatment ?
 
Barney said:
Its just Photoshop HDR isn't it?

Ansel Adams would have been the world master at photoshop and many others would be saying he's just cheating and its not real photography and shots are over-processed. Like me.
The more I read about the darkroom processes the more I realise photoshop was a godsend for many.
Click to expand...
As others have pointed out, D&B isn't the same as HDR, but you may be interested in what Ansel Adams had to say about digital, He lived just long enough to work with Kodak on their early digital sensors.


“In electronics, the technology we have now can do far more than film. As the world’s silver resources are depleted, these new technologies are particularly important… Electronic photography will soon be superior to anything we have now.

The first advance will be the exploration of existing negatives. I believe the electronic processes will enhance them. I could get superior prints from my negatives using electronics . Then the time will come when you will be able to make the entire photograph electronically. With the extremely high resolution and the enormous control you can get from electronics, the results will be fantastic. I wish I were young again”


Ansel Adams Playboy interview, May 1983.
 
Barney said:
So is that like the lasso tool in photoshop for isolating certain areas for specialist treatment ?
Click to expand...
Sort of I suppose.
In the dark room the image is projected down onto photographic paper, by putting say your hand between the light and the paper you can mask off part and reduce the exposure. I made various shapes of thin card on wire handles, these can be held over the paper to block the light. The norm is to "wiggle" them a bit this gives a soft edge (like feather in a selection in photoshop)
By having different shapes and sizes, it's easier to find one that "suits" the area your trying to mask. Some images you'd actually make a mask for maybe a sky.
Burning is the opposite. here a hole in a sheet of card is used to add more light (exposure) to the paper. Again different size and shape hole make life easier.
You can just use your hands, and I often would. The card makes it easier especially with small areas.
 
swanseamale47 said:
Sort of I suppose.
In the dark room the image is projected down onto photographic paper, by putting say your hand between the light and the paper you can mask off part and reduce the exposure. I made various shapes of thin card on wire handles, these can be held over the paper to block the light. The norm is to "wiggle" them a bit this gives a soft edge (like feather in a selection in photoshop)
By having different shapes and sizes, it's easier to find one that "suits" the area your trying to mask. Some images you'd actually make a mask for maybe a sky.
Burning is the opposite. here a hole in a sheet of card is used to add more light (exposure) to the paper. Again different size and shape hole make life easier.
You can just use your hands, and I often would. The card makes it easier especially with small areas.
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So all done by eye?

How did you know if you had dodged or burned enough?
 
Tavitonian said:
Ah, 1983. . . exactly my own Playboy reading years. But only for the serious articles and interviews, of course.:D
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Mary Millington sprung to mind then, what a girl. :)

I don't think I would have dodged her. Ha Ha
 
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myotis said:
The closest you will get to simple dodging and burning with digital is to use a brush tool to add or reduce exposure.
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Thank you Graham
 
Barney said:
So all done by eye?

How did you know if you had dodged or burned enough?
Click to expand...
Practice.

Or, when beginning, you used test strips. When making the first test print, you would estimate the base exposure, of say 10s.

Then make an actual exposure of 2.5 sec.

Then cover 7/8th of the print with a card and make a second exposure of 2.5s,

Then cover 6/8th of the print and make a third exposure of 2.5s

And repeat until you end up with a print divided into strips with different exposures.

From this test strip you can estimate that the foreground needs 9secs and the sky 24 secs. Or whatever. And, the deep shadow under the tree only needs 6 secs.

After this analysis, you need to make a dodging and burning "plan" so you know in what order you need to dodge and burn, and as described, work out what dodging and burning tools, you are going to need.

Once you know how to produce a technically correct "base" image, you can then move onto a "creative" print, where you think of dodging and burning in terms of how you want the print to "feel" and how you want the viewers eye to move around the print.

On important prints, I would leave the base print somewhere visible for a week, and work out my dodging and burning plan over a period. During this period, I would mark up the print with symbols highlighting areas on the print with D&B instructions. Once I thought I had a proper feel for what the print should look like, I would make another one based on my annotated print. This might take a few iterations to get to a final print.

I actually do something similar with Digital: making, and marking up iterative prints as I work out what the print should look like. But I also use digital annotation tools to reduce the number of physical prints made.

Grad tools give a similar effect to large-scale dodging and burning. But you can get away with doing everything with brushes. Digital however, makes some things much easier than in the silver days; e.g. luminosity masking can give subtle effects all but impossible with film. You can also control how the dodge and burn brushes work by creating areas with specific colour and tonal masks. This makes reducing the brightness of complex areas, without also darkening the shadows in those areas much easier than in the film days.

The big thing for me with digital is that it gives the same sort of control to make colour prints that was only really practical with black and white in the film days.

I hope that all makes sense.
 
myotis said:
Practice.

Or, when beginning, you used test strips. When making the first test print, you would estimate the base exposure, of say 10s.

Then make an actual exposure of 2.5 sec.

Then cover 7/8th of the print with a card and make a second exposure of 2.5s,

Then cover 6/8th of the print and make a third exposure of 2.5s

And repeat until you end up with a print divided into strips with different exposures.

From this test strip you can estimate that the foreground needs 9secs and the sky 24 secs. Or whatever. And, the deep shadow under the tree only needs 6 secs.

After this analysis, you need to make a dodging and burning "plan" so you know in what order you need to dodge and burn, and as described, work out what dodging and burning tools, you are going to need.

Once you know how to produce a technically correct "base" image, you can then move onto a "creative" print, where you think of dodging and burning in terms of how you want the print to "feel" and how you want the viewers eye to move around the print.

On important prints, I would leave the base print somewhere visible for a week, and work out my dodging and burning plan over a period. During this period, I would mark up the print with symbols highlighting areas on the print with D&B instructions. Once I thought I had a proper feel for what the print should look like, I would make another one based on my annotated print. This might take a few iterations to get to a final print.

I actually do something similar with Digital: making, and marking up iterative prints as I work out what the print should look like. But I also use digital annotation tools to reduce the number of physical prints made.

Grad tools give a similar effect to large-scale dodging and burning. But you can get away with doing everything with brushes. Digital however, makes some things much easier than in the silver days; e.g. luminosity masking can give subtle effects all but impossible with film. You can also control how the dodge and burn brushes work by creating areas with specific colour and tonal masks. This makes reducing the brightness of complex areas, without also darkening the shadows in those areas much easier than in the film days.

The big thing for me with digital is that it gives the same sort of control to make colour prints that was only really practical with black and white in the film days.

I hope that all makes sense.
Click to expand...
Thanks Graham for taking the trouble to provide that wonderful explanation, I have a handle on whats going on there now. Effectively exposure compensation on specific areas. A lot of time and trouble. I used to scoff at a pal who used to have a week off work to photoshop one image, but the work in the darkroom seems just as rigorous.
 
Tavitonian said:
Ah, 1983. . . exactly my own Playboy reading years. But only for the serious articles and interviews, of course.:D
Click to expand...

There were words?

Barney said:
So all done by eye?

How did you know if you had dodged or burned enough?
Click to expand...

Practice and trial end error! Much better explained above.
 
I suppose that the clarity of vision to enable one to visualise the final result must come first.
 
Barney said:
Thanks Graham for taking the trouble to provide that wonderful explanation, I have a handle on whats going on there now. Effectively exposure compensation on specific areas. A lot of time and trouble. I used to scoff at a pal who used to have a week off work to photoshop one image, but the work in the darkroom seems just as rigorous.
Click to expand...

The work is the same, but the work is different. There are some common tools between PS and printing, like dodging etc, but stuff like contrast and tonality comes down to knowledge of papers, developers, pre-flashing and a bunch of different, sometimes obscure processes. It's both rigorous and organic at the same time.
 
My dodge and burn method with Photoshop (I use CS2 although we have later versions) is a feathered selection and then either levels or curves. Although a global change, followed by a stepping back and applying the history brush with varying opacity is sometimes used.
 
Barney said:
I suppose that the clarity of vision to enable one to visualise the final result must come first.
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Ideally, yes.

But much as we (I) often talk about the need for clarity of intent or vision, and I try to visualise the final print when taking the picture, in reality, I am also strongly influenced by how the file looks when it appears on the computer screen.

Visualisation is a mix of geometric composition (which you are largely stuck with once you have pressed the shutter) along with tonal and colour relationships. The latter, which are still important components of composition, are the parts which you have some control over during processing to better match how you saw the subject at the point of exposure.

A lot of dodging and burning is often fixing the technical limitations of the process; i.e raw digital files and film negatives always contain more information than the print can show, but you can bring that detail back through dodging and burning (plus with film (and black and white) by choosing the correct contrast grade of the paper.

The intent and visualisation part is important to help take your photograph beyond being a simple test of your technical expertise.
 
myotis said:
A lot of dodging and burning is often fixing the technical limitations of the process; i.e raw digital files and film negatives always contain more information than the print can show, but you can bring that detail back through dodging and burning (plus with film (and black and white) by choosing the correct contrast grade of the paper.

The intent and visualisation part is important to help take your photograph beyond being a simple test of your technical expertise.
Click to expand...

And this is important too. Some time ago the phrase "just fix it in post" was used to show derision, mocking the inability to 'get it right' in camera. But someone who understands their equipment and has a clear intent may also choose to take a picture with the express intention of controlling light and shade, colour and contrast through image development.
 
ancient_mariner said:
And this is important too. Some time ago the phrase "just fix it in post" was used to show derision, mocking the inability to 'get it right' in camera. But someone who understands their equipment and has a clear intent may also choose to take a picture with the express intention of controlling light and shade, colour and contrast through image development.
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To my mind, what happens in camera (in terms of processing) is being dictated by technicians (and psychologists and marketing people) at Nikon, Canon etc who have their own ideas on what makes pictures with "pleasing" colours and tonality.

For me, as I want either "accurate" colours and tonalities, or colours and tonalities that realistically represent what "I" saw when taking the picture, every picture needs "fixed in post".
 
Barney said:
So all done by eye?

How did you know if you had dodged or burned enough?
Click to expand...
A combination of test strips before the actual image (as explained by Graham) and experience. But it's not uncommon to do more than one print to get the exact look your after. Sometimes the dodging/burning will be too obvious, or you'll miss a bit or something. So a second print to tweek the image.
Paper was fairly cheap back in my darkroom days. I dread to think what 20x16 costs now.
 
I recall reading that when Edward Weston-super-Mare (auto correct strikes again :) )was no longer able to make his own prints his son (probably Cole) printed under Edward's direction. The son said later that sometimes it took three days to get the final print.
 
myotis said:
To my mind, what happens in camera (in terms of processing) is being dictated by technicians (and psychologists and marketing people) at Nikon, Canon etc who have their own ideas on what makes pictures with "pleasing" colours and tonality.

For me, as I want either "accurate" colours and tonalities, or colours and tonalities that realistically represent what "I" saw when taking the picture, every picture needs "fixed in post".
Click to expand...


That relies on a very accurate memory of the colour(s) you think you saw.
 
Nod said:
That relies on a very accurate memory of the colour(s) you think you saw.
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For "accurate" colours I would use some form of colour checker. But with few exceptions, we hardly ever want scientifically "accurate" colours, because that isn't how the brain sees them or how we remember them: and everyone sees differently. However, as a generalisation we remember colours as more contrasty and more saturated than they would appear in a scientifically accurate representation.

For colours as "I see them", it's my memory that matters, as in this instance I'm not trying to get "accurate" colours, just those that give a realistic representation of how I remember them. To do this, I try to remember the mood of the colours rather than the detailed colours.

What I don't want, is my memory tainted by the colours created by the camera manufacturers' and processing software defaults/emulations, which is why I always start with a linear raw, with contrast and saturation turned down.

But I'm not suggesting anyone else should work in such an extreme manner.

Edit: I should clarify this and say that I'm talking about what I would describe as expressive photography of landscapes type subjects, which is my main interest.

For my secondary interest of wildlife photography, which is largely a documentary and descriptive style of photography, I am much more interested in a realistic representation of the actual colours. This has its own problems, as these colours also change with ambient lighting and environment. But in this instance, I see it as a technical problem rather than a creative one.
 
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TBH, with a couple of exceptions, I was usually happy with the colour renditions that D&P houses gave as well as accepting the differences between slide films' tonality.

Having played with raw files until I was happy with them then comparing the results to SOOC JPGs, I realised that the manufacturers (and, perhaps more importantly/relevantly!) the Joint Photographic experts Group had made a better fist of the conversions than I had - as confirmed with blind testing on Mrs Nod and my parents who also preferred the JPGs!
 
Nod said:
TBH, with a couple of exceptions, I was usually happy with the colour renditions that D&P houses gave as well as accepting the differences between slide films' tonality.

Having played with raw files until I was happy with them then comparing the results to SOOC JPGs, I realised that the manufacturers (and, perhaps more importantly/relevantly!) the Joint Photographic experts Group had made a better fist of the conversions than I had - as confirmed with blind testing on Mrs Nod and my parents who also preferred the JPGs!
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It's not that surprising that the camera manufacturers'/software manufacturers' default processing gives results that people like, because they have teams of experts and decades of expertise studying how the majority "like" their photographs to look. I mentioned this in an earlier post.

As an aside, and I'm sure you must know this, the JPEG bit in JPEG only refers to the file compression algorithm and doesn't have any influence on the colour or tonality of how an image looks.
 
I am more particular than Graham. I use a bespoke profile for each of my cameras for the Raw conversion. It is not because I think that this gives the results I finally want but is an excellent starting points though I do not need to make any further colour adjustment for most of my images. I was drawn to this because at a club outdoor photo session one of the models had reddish hair. My shot when posted looked a bit yellowish compared to a Nikon which was a deeper red. After we both produce bespoke profiles and reprocessed the images they looked almost identical but an orange colour which was probably correct. For most of my photography this precision is not really necessary.

Dave
 
Dave Canon said:
I am more particular than Graham. I use a bespoke profile for each of my cameras for the Raw conversion. It is not because I think that this gives the results I finally want but is an excellent starting points though I do not need to make any further colour adjustment for most of my images. I was drawn to this because at a club outdoor photo session one of the models had reddish hair. My shot when posted looked a bit yellowish compared to a Nikon which was a deeper red. After we both produce bespoke profiles and reprocessed the images they looked almost identical but an orange colour which was probably correct. For most of my photography this precision is not really necessary.

Dave
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I also use custom profiles for each camera, but I'm happy with the Capture One linear profiles, which give me the same starting point across my different cameras. From which I then apply my default contrast, saturation and luminosity curve.

As Capture One gives me the same starting point with the linear profile. My subsequent customisation gives me the same starting point regardless of camera.
 
myotis said:
I also use custom profiles for each camera, but I'm happy with the Capture One linear profiles, which give me the same starting point across my different cameras. From which I then apply my default contrast, saturation and luminosity curve.

As Capture One gives me the same starting point with the linear profile. My subsequent customisation gives me the same starting point regardless of camera.
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But each camera is different even two cameras of the same model so only a bespoke profile for each camera by serial number will give a precision starting colour. A colleague was a wedding photographer and used two Nikon D500's with different lenses. Before he calibrated each D500, he had different colours from each camera and while in some circumstances the difference might be considered subtle; not for a wedding. The calibration speeded up his processing by a significant factor.

Dave
 
Dave Canon said:
But each camera is different even two cameras of the same model so only a bespoke profile for each camera by serial number will give a precision starting colour. A colleague was a wedding photographer and used two Nikon D500's with different lenses. Before he calibrated each D500, he had different colours from each camera and while in some circumstances the difference might be considered subtle; not for a wedding. The calibration speeded up his processing by a significant factor.

Dave
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Fair enough.

I've used and still have Lumariver to produce my own custom profiles on a camera by camera basis, and yes there was a noticeable difference and improvement, albeit subtle. I haven't done this for my current cameras, so yes, in producing your own custom camera profiles you are being more precise with your approach than I am.

I should really do it again for my current cameras, but it's a lot of work for a small benefit. I wasn't doing it to match cameras, but to maximise image quality, and I found , most noticeably, an improved gradation in green tones.

Since doing my original custom curves, Capture One revised their camera profiles and my custom curves no longer showed their original advantage. But I can understand the benefit of the example you give to ensure consistency between cameras.

The "normal" approach promoted by Capture One for differences between cameras is to use the colour checker to make adjustments with C1 controls and then save that as a default correction, which is automatically applied on import. Not as elegant as creating a custom profile, and you aren't improving any subtle colour or tonal gradations in the way you can with a custom profile, but effective enough for the two-camera wedding situation you describe.

But you have me thinking on whether I should have a go at making some custom profiles again.
 
myotis said:
Fair enough.

I've used and still have Lumariver to produce my own custom profiles on a camera by camera basis, and yes there was a noticeable difference and improvement, albeit subtle. I haven't done this for my current cameras, so yes, in producing your own custom camera profiles you are being more precise with your approach than I am.

I should really do it again for my current cameras, but it's a lot of work for a small benefit. I wasn't doing it to match cameras, but to maximise image quality, and I found , most noticeably, an improved gradation in green tones.

Since doing my original custom curves, Capture One revised their camera profiles and my custom curves no longer showed their original advantage. But I can understand the benefit of the example you give to ensure consistency between cameras.

The "normal" approach promoted by Capture One for differences between cameras is to use the colour checker to make adjustments with C1 controls and then save that as a default correction, which is automatically applied on import. Not as elegant as creating a custom profile, and you aren't improving any subtle colour or tonal gradations in the way you can with a custom profile, but effective enough for the two-camera wedding situation you describe.

But you have me thinking on whether I should have a go at making some custom profiles again.
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Graham, pardon me for being cheeky but my Mum taught me that if you don't ask you don't get.

Would you be so kind as perhaps explaining with a tutorial on how you go about making custom profiles for both camera matches and to maximise image quality?
 
Barney said:
Graham, pardon me for being cheeky but my Mum taught me that if you don't ask you don't get.

Would you be so kind as perhaps explaining with a tutorial on how you go about making custom profiles for both camera matches and to maximise image quality?
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I think you would be better asking @Dave Canon as I've only done it once, using LumaRiver and for Capture One. The latter adds to the complications because it uses a dual curve profile.

The exact process will vary with the program you are using for your raw processor, but you need to photograph a colour checker card with squares of known colours,

Then you then run those files through a bit of calibration software, that compares the known colours on the card with the colours rendered by the camera, and your raw processing software.

Using this data, the calibration software creates a profile that makes corrections to the image rendered by your raw processor so that the colours you see on the computer screen will match the original colours on the colour checker calibration card. Assuming your monitor is also colour calibrated.

You then make this the default profile for that camera with that raw processor.

In theory, this means that regardless of camera, the colours rendered on your computer screen will always look the same and accurately match the colours on the colour checker card.

With Lightroom/ACR the process is relatively simple, and when you buy a colour checker card from someone like Calibrite, you get the software for free, and it runs as a Lightroom plug-in. Actually, I now realise I lied earlier about only doing this once, because I've also made calibrated profiles for Lightroom

Making "good quality" custom colour profiles is actually rather tricky, but the mechanics of using the Calibrite colour checker with Lightroom is relatively painless.

The problem comes from us not actually liking accurate colours, but the process above is a good start, especially if you work in a museum making copies of paintings for archival purposes, or if you want different cameras to have the same starting point. But the commonly used Color Checker Passports don't have enough colours to make them suitable for "scientific" photography, ie the museum example above.

There are lots of Youtube videos that go through the process
e.g

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLQTSQBd2jc&t=648s


But it's also worthwhile having a read of the Lumariver manual, which gives some background into creating profiles.


It's something that 99% of photographers can probably ignore, but as well as the convenience of having colours match across different cameras (at least more closely than they would without calibration) it also squeezes out the maximum quality from your sensor in terms of colour gradation and gamut.
 
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