1. So what is the burn and dodge tool good for anyway's? Well, if you ever need to lighten or darken something to add depth, darken colors, or add some other sort of attribute to an image or design, the burn and dodge tools can very well be your best friends. You can see common uses of these tools all around my website. I used the burn tool to add a darker part of the navigation menus, and the dodge tool to make it appear like these menus pop out (I am talking about the headers above different areas of GreyCobra.com along the left and right menus). This is not all these tools are limited to though. You can tell them which parts of an image to make darker or brighter with some simple settings. In this tutorial, I will guide you through the process of making some flat shapes appear 3d by using the burn and dodge tools. To start off, lets first create a new document (300x300) and make a new eclipse selection (hold shift to make a perfect circle. Make a new layer and fill this selection with a medium gray:
2. The next thing we are going to do is decide where the light is coming from. By adding light, we can better examine depth in our image. For purposes of this tutorial, I am deciding that the light is coming from the bottom right of our image. What does this mean? This means that the light source will make the shape appear to have its bottom right side lit up, and the top left side in a shadow.
3. Lets begin shading our shape. Grab your burn tool. The burn tool is used to darken parts of your document, while the dodge tool brightens them. Select a medium sized brush, and start making some brush strokes around the outer edge of your circle:
4. Doesn't get much simpler. Now lets do the same thing to the bottom right with the dodge tool:
5. In just two strokes, we have gone from a flat object, to an object with depth and lighting. This is just a basic example of how we can use these tools though. In a better situation, you could use these tools to get proper lighting effects in a photo, such as sun gleaming off the ocean. Ill show you another object I've made so you can see what else the dodge and burn tool are good for:
Good Luck!