[kivi5]

I have always wondered about these three tools in Elements. I've played with them. Looked up on help about them but never seem to really "get" what to use them for. Anyone want to enlighten me as to what you do with them on your pages?

[Heatheranne]

I haven't tried the sponge tool yet, but I used the burn and dodge for two of the Jumpstart January tasks. Briefly, the burn tool makes something darker and the dodge tool makes it lighter, so you can add shadows and highlights to an element or layer using both tools and I expect that you could use the sponge tool on the same layer as well.

It was my first time using them, so I'm sure that I'll improve over time. I'll put the links here because there are explanations about the tools under one of them. Special Delivery and Through the Screen Door. We weren't acually supposed to do a layout for the screen door one, but I was having fun and wanted to do the layout, so posted it in the UFO challenge. lol

[Cheri T]

I have dodged the highlights/catchlights in eyes in photographs before. The tool works with any brush.
I have also dodged (lightened) and burned (darkened) areas around, eg. a paper clip where part of the paper clip is supposed to be behind the paper. It can be a bit tricky to get it to look completely realistic, but fun to play.
In this layout: Great-Grandchildren I dodged and burned the "I love grandma" and "I love grandpa" word art strips on top of the already 3D-appearing heart. This was easy to make look realistic b/c all I had to do was follow the light and dark areas on the heart itself and copy that for the strip I placed on top of it.

Sponge: never used it! Eager to see what others say about it too.

HTH:)

[teecee]

As Heatheranne and Cheri mentioned, the dodge and burn tools are mainly used for highlighting and darkening areas. The sponge tool is used to saturate or desaturate color. Select the sponge tool, then in the options bar choose either saturate or desaturate depending on what you want to do to an area in the photo. Next, choose the flow percentage from the drop down box in the options bar to control the amount of saturation/desaturation desired. It's fun to play with. These tools are covered in a course: The Art of Painting with Light and Dark by Katherine Weaver. I don't know if/when the course will be offered again, but it was a great course, so you may want to watch for it. HTH

[Belle]

Smudge Tool

Sharpen Tool

Blur or Soften edges


These are the sites that I got from Bride (Lei) and Elisha