How to Dodge & Burn with a Wacom Tablet

How to Dodge and Burn with a Wacom Tablet in Photoshop

A pressure-sensitive tablet changes what’s possible with dodging and burning in a way a mouse simply can’t match — instead of a brush that lays down the same flat opacity everywhere, pressure itself can control both the size and the intensity of a stroke in real time. Building one custom brush around that pressure sensitivity, then using it on curves-based dodge and burn layers, produces noticeably more natural, fading light and shadow than painting with a mouse ever will.

Getting Started: Why a Mouse Falls Short Here

Before building a pressure-sensitive brush, it’s worth seeing exactly what a mouse can and can’t do for comparison.

1. Test a Soft Brush with Your Mouse

   Make a new layer, choose red, and paint a test stroke with a soft round brush using a mouse. Notice that it lays down the same full opacity everywhere along the stroke, with no natural variation.

2. Try Lowering Flow to Compensate

   Bring Flow down to around 5% and paint again — this lets you build up opacity gradually with repeated strokes, but you still can’t vary brush size or intensity within a single stroke the way pressure sensitivity allows.

Building a Brush That Responds to Pen Pressure

A Wacom tablet’s pressure sensitivity only helps if the brush itself is set up to respond to it, which takes a couple of settings in Shape Dynamics.

3. Set Size Jitter’s Control to Pen Pressure

   Open Shape Dynamics, find Size Jitter, and change its Control setting to Pen Pressure. Pressing lightly now produces a smaller mark, and pressing harder produces a larger one, all within a single continuous stroke.

4. Set a Minimum Diameter

   Raise the Minimum Diameter slightly so the lightest pressure doesn’t shrink the brush down to nothing, keeping strokes usable even at their smallest.

Linking Flow to Pressure as Well

Size alone doesn’t capture everything pressure sensitivity can offer — flow, meaning how much paint builds up, benefits from the same treatment.

5. Set Flow Jitter’s Control to Pen Pressure

   Under Transfer, find Flow Jitter and set its Control to Pen Pressure as well. Lighter pressure now lays down less opacity, and harder pressure lays down more, fading naturally within one stroke instead of applying flat, even coverage.

6. Lower the Base Flow

   Bring the overall Flow value down to around 20% so the brush stays subtle even under firmer pressure, leaving room to build up an effect gradually across several passes.

Reusing This Brush for Any Future Dodge and Burn Work

Once these settings are dialed in, this brush isn’t specific to any one image — it works for dodging and burning on portraits, landscapes, or any other photo. You don’t have to rebuild it, either: the brush Aaron makes here is in the free download. To load it, press B for the Brush Tool, right-click, click the gear icon and choose Import Brushes. Pick PHLEARN Dodge & Burn.abr from your download and click Open. It loads at the very bottom of the brush list. The sample image used throughout this walkthrough, a long exposure of fog rolling through mountains, is in the free download along with the custom brush, so you can practice with the same settings before applying them to your own photos.

Setting Up a Curves Layer for Dodging

With the brush ready, dodging (brightening) uses a Curves adjustment layer with an inverted mask, so brightness only shows up where you actually paint.

7. Add a Curves Layer and Brighten It

   Hide the red test layer first. Then create a Curves adjustment layer and drag the curve upward to make the image a little brighter, then invert the layer mask (Ctrl + I on PC, Cmd + I on Mac) so the brightening is hidden everywhere until you paint it in.

8. Paint White Where Light Should Increase

   Select your pressure-sensitive brush, set it to paint white, and use the bracket keys, or hold Control + Option and drag left or right on a Mac (Alt + right-click and drag on a PC), to vary brush size as you paint — a larger brush for broad areas, a smaller one for fine detail.

Setting Up a Second Curves Layer for Burning

Burning (darkening) works exactly the same way as dodging, just on a separate layer set to darken instead of brighten.

9. Add a Second Curves Layer and Darken It

   Create another Curves adjustment layer, drag the curve down to darken the image, and invert its mask the same way.

10. Paint White Where Shadow Should Deepen

    Paint white with the same brush over areas that should read as darker, adjusting brush size to match the scale of each area just as with the dodge layer.

Fixing Mistakes Without Starting Over

If an area gets too bright or too dark, painting black over that same spot on the layer mask hides the effect there without touching anything else. Both Curves layers stay fully adjustable afterward too — double-click either one at any point to make it stronger or weaker.

Why a Landscape Benefits from This as Much as a Portrait

Dodging and burning is often associated with portrait retouching, but a long exposure landscape with soft fog and rolling clouds benefits just as much — adding light and shadow into the mist gives it a sense of three-dimensionality that a flat exposure alone doesn’t capture.

Common Mistakes to Avoid With This Technique

The most common mistake is skipping the pressure-sensitivity setup entirely and painting dodge and burn with default brush settings, which produces the same flat, mouse-like result a tablet is specifically capable of avoiding. The second is using one brush size for an entire image instead of scaling it to match each area — a large area deserves a larger brush, and fine detail needs a much smaller one. If a dodge or burn layer looks too strong once finished, adjust its Curves values directly rather than repainting the mask from scratch.

Why This Technique Works

What separates a tablet-based dodge and burn from a mouse-based one is that pressure sensitivity lets a single stroke carry its own natural variation in size and intensity, rather than needing dozens of separate strokes to fake that same gradual buildup. Linking both Size Jitter and Flow Jitter to pen pressure means the brush behaves the way a natural hand movement would — lighter touches for subtle work, firmer ones where more correction is needed — instead of a flat, uniform mark. Pairing that brush with inverted Curves masks, rather than painting brightness or darkness directly onto pixels, keeps the whole effect adjustable indefinitely, the same non-destructive logic behind How to Master Dodging & Burning in Photoshop more broadly.

Final Thoughts

Once this pressure-sensitive brush is built, or loaded from the free download, it’s reusable on any future dodge and burn work, whether the subject is a landscape, a portrait, or anything else. The core habit worth taking away is linking both size and flow to pen pressure rather than just one or the other — that combination is what makes a stroke feel like it’s responding to your hand rather than applying a flat, mechanical effect. A Wacom Tablet is what makes this particular workflow possible in the first place, but the underlying Curves-and-mask structure applies just as well to any dodge and burn work, tablet or not.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• Mouse onlySoft brush, Flow about 5% in the options bar, build up in passes
• Size follows pressureBrush settings > Shape Dynamics > Size Jitter Control: Pen Pressure; Minimum Diameter up a little
• Flow follows pressureTransfer > Flow Jitter Control: Pen Pressure; Flow about 20%
• Load the free brushB, right-click, gear icon > Import Brushes > PHLEARN Dodge & Burn.abr > Open
• DodgeCurves a little brighter, Cmd/Ctrl + I to invert the mask, paint white on the lights
• BurnSecond Curves a little darker, Cmd/Ctrl + I, paint white on the darks
• Brush size[ and ]; Control + Option-drag (Mac) or Alt + right-click drag (PC)