Dodge and Burn to Get Rid of Shadows

My husband likes to wear baseball hats, which is fine. He looks good in them, but it sometimes poses a problem when taking his picture. That’s right, the dreaded bill of the hat oftentimes casts a shadow over his eyes, hiding his handsome face. Most times I don’t bother asking him to remove his hat because it’s an easy fix. All it takes is the swipe of a finger in one of my favorite mobile apps for photo editing, Snapseed. No need to move the photo onto my laptop, it can all be done on my phone.

I took a quick picture of myself for this tutorial, my husband doesn’t want to have his face all over the internet. I know, it’s an all-out awful picture, but it works for what I want to do. I really should have taken off my glasses.
Normally I would throw this picture out, but instead I’m going to fix some of the shadow using Snapseed. It’s easy, just open the picture in Snapseed, then go to TOOLS > Brush. Click on the Dodge & Burn brush.

Dodge & Burn will give you different intensities (10, 5, Eraser, -10, -5). The negative numbers will make the area you color with your finger  darker, while the regular numbers will make it brighter. The Eraser option will remove any mistakes you make.

The red shows the area I’m using the tool

The is after the original adjustment was made

With your finger, color in the area you want to adjust. If you click on the eye button on the right, the area you adjust will be tinted red (as in the first photo above). When you’re done, click on the eye again to see the effect (the above picture on the right shows the final effect). If you don’t click on the eye, you’ll see the effects happen as you color it with your finger.

Tip: You can pinch to zoom. A box will appear in the bottom, left corner. Use this box to position the photo.

In the picture below I added the Dodge & Burn brush to more of my forehead and the lenses on the glasses.

When you’ve finished making adjustments, click on the check mark in the lower right corner, then EXPORT in the menu that comes up. You’ll get four option: Share, Save, Export, Export as. Choose the option you want and you’re done.

If you want to explore Snapseed further, feel free to check out my other posts: Retouching Old Photos in Snapseed; Snapseed, Powerful Tools for Better Images and Using the Brush Tool in Snapseed.

Snapseed is available on Android and iOS