It may be hard to believe these days, but there was a time not so long ago when cameras were not digital, and photo developing was done in a lab, not on your computer. Digital cameras and Photoshop may have brought the world of photo editing out of the darkroom and into your living room (or wherever your computer happens to be), but many of Photoshop’s tools and features have their roots in traditional film development.
Two great examples of this are Photoshop’s Dodge and Burn tools, both of which are found in the Tools palette. The terms “dodge” and “burn” refer to techniques that were used to either lighten (dodge) or darken (burn) specific areas of a photo by increasing or limiting the exposure in those areas. The Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop are the digital versions of these techniques and are often used to either lighten underexposed areas of a photo or darken overexposed areas.