The Pixlr dodge tool is used to lighten pixels. At first this may sound like a quirky feature that carries little purpose or use. Whilst it is not a tool that you will use for the bulk of your work within design or graphic projects, it’s certainly an integral and frequently used tool.
Examples of what the doge tool is often used for include teeth whitening, the lightening of eyes or facial expressions and so forth. You probably would have seen this effect used in most magazine and editorial or marketing related shots.
So for example you may want to use this tool for personal images that are publicly displayed on business profile pages, social networks and about us or meet the team pages on websites.
Another other likely instance where you might need this tool is if you had a product that needs lightening up to emphasise a key part of the image to attract the eyes attention towards it.
Let’s use a theoretical scenario of when we need to use this tool. Assume that your company had a professional photo shoot and you enjoyed a coffee before your photograph was taken. It’s likely that a quality camera would pick this up and display your teeth with slight stains. Whilst the photo might look ok, ideally you want your photo to look crisp, sharp and without any imperfections.
Re-booking another photo-shoot is not a cost effective solution. The Pixlr dodge tool is all you need. Upload your photo into the Pixlr platform and lets begin.
As you can see, this example has had the coffee stain emphasised somewhat to demonstrate the effectiveness of the dodge tool.
As you can see the coffee stains have ruined the photo and should be corrected before the image is published online. Let’s make a fresh impression by turning those teeth pearly white once again.
To do this you will need to select the dodge tool, it looks like a black bat and located in the left hand side toolbar.
You will see that your second from top menu bar will change once the dodge tool has been selected. This toolbar offers various settings that you can change to determine how the dodge tool is applied to your image.
As you can see, the dodge tool enables us to select a brush size and an application style. You can also select an exposure level just like you can with many other tools. The exposure level dictates how harshly the tool is applied to your image.
Unlike most of the other Pixlr tools, the dodge tool offers a range selection where you can choose how the tool is applied within the image. Options include; shadows, mid-tones and highlights. We tend to use mid-tones and shadows most frequently as the application is far less abrasive and you can retain more of the images detail, whereas the highlights option is very firm and a bit too overwhelming in most instances.
Once the settings have been selected, it’s time to begin the application process. To apply the dodge tool simply click down the left hand button on your mouse or track pad and begin to move the brush slowly and carefully over the areas that you want to brighten.
So we have seen what the original photograph looked like, but lets look at how that image has been transformed after accurate implementation.
