Dodge and burn Photoshop questions

1. When you burn in Photoshop, are you damaging pixels?
2. Does dodge or burning bring noise into the photo?

last question:

3. Let's say you have burned some parts of your image and towards the end of your workflow with a particular photo, you want to recover or back out some of the 'burned' areas.  Can you?

Fitch wrote: 1. When you burn in Photoshop, are you damaging pixels?

Damaging?
Let's say altering and that is what you want to do… isn't it?

Fitch wrote: 2. Does dodge or burning bring noise into the photo?

Maybe… and that depends on the file's bit depth. To be sure,
prefer to operate on RAWs in a proper converter before pu-
blishing to an image format like PSDs or TIFFs or PNGs.

Fitch wrote: 3. Let's say you have burned some parts of your image and towards the end of your workflow with a particular photo, you want to recover or back out some of the 'burned' areas.  Can you?

Sure, one can make an intermediary snap shot — always a cle-
ver idea. Preferably applied to higher bit depth files but make
sure the resources are there in the first place.

It depends upon how you D&B. I never use the tools.

I create a new layer set to 'overlay' and filled with 50% gray. Then I use a white or black brush on that layer to make my changes. It's non -destructive, you can reverse the effect by changing your brush color, and you can adjust the opacity of the layer to dial in just the right over-all amount.

Suggest your brush set at 10% flow, 8% opacity, with the layer set to 100%. Build up the effect (it takes a while). back off the opacity of the layer to zero and then bring it back to find your sweet spot.

garyrhook wrote: It depends upon how you D&B. I never use the tools.

I create a new layer set to 'overlay' and filled with 50% gray. Then I use a white or black brush on that layer to make my changes. It's non -destructive, you can reverse the effect by changing your brush color, and you can adjust the opacity of the layer to dial in just the right over-all amount.

Suggest your brush set at 10% flow, 8% opacity, with the layer set to 100%. Build up the effect (it takes a while). back off the opacity of the layer to zero and then bring it back to find your sweet spot.

Great idea, I've not thought about going this route myself.  

garyrhook wrote: It depends upon how you D&B. I never use the tools.

I create a new layer set to 'overlay' and filled with 50% gray. Then I use a white or black brush on that layer to make my changes. It's non -destructive, you can reverse the effect by changing your brush color, and you can adjust the opacity of the layer to dial in just the right over-all amount.

Suggest your brush set at 10% flow, 8% opacity, with the layer set to 100%. Build up the effect (it takes a while). back off the opacity of the layer to zero and then bring it back to find your sweet spot.

Same here except I set the layer to 'soft light'. It's the only sensible way to dodge and burn in my opinion. You can use any color also for effect and not just black and white. It sounds like have the D/B layer set to overlay is a stronger effect. I generally use my brush at 100% flow and 12% opacity. Layer also at 100. Either way is same effect, just a slightly different approach.

This technique is non-destructive as long as you don't flatten/merge the layer.