In photography, dodge and burn tools are used to affect the exposure of a design. In AVA, the Dodge and Burn Tool uses the shape of the selected brush, the pressure settings and the brush transparency to reproduce these effects. It can be a very useful tool to correct the colours or tones of motifs or areas at repeat joins where scanning has introduced differences in the design.

Select the dodge and burn tool in the Tools Palette or press O on the keyboard to automatically select this tool and open its setting window. The Type pop up bar displays the tool types of dodge, burn and sponge. These can also be selected directly in the tools window by clicking and holding on the tool. This way you can see which tool type is selected. You can also use your up and down arrow keys to change between types.

When either the dodge, burn or sponge tools are selected, a coating window will appear, in which you can quickly edit the settings:

• Dodge - lightens the area you paint over
• Burn - darkens the area you paint over
• Sponge - changes the saturation of the area you paint over
• Dodge 1st, Burn 2nd - will dodge the first layer you have activated and burn the second
• Burn 1st, Dodge 2nd - will burn the first layer you have activated and dodge the second

In dodge or burn mode, the range pop up bar gives the options highlights, mid-tones and shadows. This controls the tonal range which will be affected by either of the selected tools. If you use the Dodge 1st Burn 2nd or Burn 1st Dodge 2nd tool, you can activate two layers and apply the selected options respectively.

In sponge mode, the range pop up bar changes to saturate or desaturate. This changes the saturation of the area that is painted over. Sponge mode only works on RGB Images. 

Exposure allows you to control the amount of effect that the tool has on the design. For example, setting the exposure to 100% would have the maximum effect, whereas setting the exposure to 10% would have a minimal effect.

The Movie

This function allows you to apply your Gripping with a brush rather than to the whole file (or in a selection), this can help you to balance non tonal textures very quickly and with great control.  As the gripping is applied with the brush you could also use the function to apply a grip only to particular parts in a design.

Getting started with the Gripping Brush :

1. Open the Brushes Library by double-clicking on the Brush Tool in your Tools Palette, from from the Window menu.
2. From the dropdown menu to the right of the action icon (see below), select the Gripping option.
3. Go to Window Menu > Gripping and set your desired grip mode and amount.
4. Activate the relevant layers and paint onto the area, which you wish to grip using the Brush Tool, now as you paint instead of painting you will be applying your gripping to the layer(s) selected with the brush, see movie below!

Double click movie to view full screen.

This tool is popular amongst engravers and designers who want quickly develop, balance and enhance textures and designs.

Selecting motifs is very simple. Similar to the  Carbon Copy Tool, you hold down ⌥ (option key) to select the area you want to stamp throughout your design. Selections can be made in rectangles, ovals, by using a lasso, or by using current brush (setting your current paintbrush as a stamp). Once a selection has been made, the selected motif can be resized using the 1 and 2 keys, and rotated as you work using the 3 and 4 keys. Each click of the 3 and 4 keys rotates the angle by 1º. All resizing and changes made to the angle of the stamp can be reset by pressing 0 on your keyboard.

For anyone who is left handed, the [ and ] keys can be used to resize the motif, and the left and right arrow keys can be used to rotate.

• Drag from centre - your selections will be drawn from their centre point as opposed to the top left
• Snap to selection - snaps your selection to the content within the selection. This option is on by default
• Set Source From Current Selection - sets any existing selection in the document as your stamp motif
• Add stamp to Brushes - will add your current stamp into the Brushes library
  
  

The movie below shows you everything you need to know.

It is possible to create a marble or stone texture from scratch using some creative tools. You can very quickly fill up a design or add texture using this method

Using filters to create texture

1. Open your layout file and magic wand the mask you want to work with
2. Add a new 8 bit layer
3. Go to View Menu > Filter Browser
4. Add a new filter set by clicking the + (plus button). 
5. Choose your filter from the list - we recommend using the Clouds as a starting point, as this is a great way to add texture and granularity
   
6. Click Apply to apply the texture
   

Using existing textures to make brushes and build your design

1. Open a separated texture file 
2. Look through each layer and look for interesting areas to turn into brushes. For more information on how to do this click here.  
   
   We recommend making a few different ones to balance the texture and make it look less CAD created. 
   
   To make these brushes look even better, we advise to increase the spacing to over 100% and also tick Rotate while Painting to give a more randomised effect. You can also make use of the Pressure Size and Pressure Density options if you are using a Wacom tablet.
3. Snap to the mask in the tile layout file and start to paint with the new brushes, building up texture.
   

Further manipulation of the layers

There are many other tools in AVA we can use to further manipulate and build up the texture. 

• Flip and Gamma
• Dodge and burn
• Carbon copy
• Combine to layer