In the first lesson you were introduced to some of Photoshop’s retouch tools: the Blur tool, the Smudge tool, and the Sharpen tool. In this lesson, we will continue to explore retouching tools with discussions of the Dodge tool, The Burn tool, and the Sponge tool.

The dodge, burn, and sponge tools differ from the tools in the first lesson, in that the dodge, burn, and sponge tools produce direct effects on the colour tones of your image. These tools lighten (dodge), darken (burn), or intensify (sponge) the colour values for the areas that you drag your mouse pointer over.

When using these tools keep in mind that it is best to work from a copy of your image. This way you will always have the original image to return to if your retouching efforts produce unwanted results.