PhotoLab 10 Control Points: Classic Dodge & Burn Without Painting Masks

When a face sits under a hat brim, a jersey disappears into shadow, or a background is screaming hotter than your subject, you don’t always need a hand-painted mask. In DxO PhotoLab 10, a Control Point (U Point) is how I dodge and burn locally — lighten what I want seen, darken what I want quiet — without tracing edges.

This post is the written companion to the video: when Control Points beat AI masks, how to place and size them, and the same job pattern I use on sports, portraits, and travel frames.

When Control Points beat AI masks

PhotoLab 10’s AI person and face masks are excellent when the subject is clean and the selection is obvious. Use them.

Reach for Control Points when:

• The problem is a region of light, not a whole person (open a cheek, kill a hotspot on a wall, lift a sleeve).

• AI grabs too much or too little and you’d spend longer fixing the mask than fixing the frame.

• You want classic dodge-and-burn thinking: push exposure, contrast, or clarity in a soft ball of influence and move on.

Control Points are surgical. AI masks are subject selection. Different tools, same edit suite.

The job in one sentence

Drop a point, set the size, adjust exposure (and friends), feather with influence — no brush painting required.

That’s the whole workflow. Everything else is judgment about where the light is wrong.

Place, size, influence

1. Place the Control Point on the area you care about — the shadowed eye, the hot sky next to a silhouette, the muddy midtone on a jersey.

2. Size so the core of the adjustment covers the problem without swallowing half the frame.

3. Influence (the soft falloff) is your feather. Wider influence = smoother blend into surrounding tones. Tighter influence = more local punch.

4. Push Exposure first for classic dodge (up) or burn (down). Add contrast or clarity only if the region still looks flat or mushy after the exposure move.

Stack a second point if one region needs lift and another needs quiet. Don’t force one point to do two opposite jobs.

Three ways I use it

1. Open a shadow (dodge)
Face under a brim, athlete in a dugout, traveler in a doorway. Point on the dark region, size to the feature, lift exposure until detail returns — stop before the area goes chalky or disconnects from the rest of the light.

2. Quiet a hotspot (burn)
Bright wall behind a speaker, blown sky next to a silhouette, specular glare on pavement. Point on the hot patch, pull exposure down, keep influence soft so you don’t leave a dark “thumbprint.”

3. Shape the frame
Slight burn on edges or a distracting bright corner so the eye stays on the subject. Subtle wins. If you can see the edit from across the room, you went too far.

In the video I walk these on real frames so you can see the before/after on the timeline, not just the sliders.

When a Control Brush is better

Points are fast when the problem is roughly circular or blob-shaped. Switch to a Control Brush (or combine) when:

• The region is a long stripe (a horizon, a jersey number line, a railing).

• You need to paint around something the point keeps grabbing.

• One point’s influence keeps bleeding into skin or sky you want untouched.

Brush is still local correction — you’re just choosing the shape. Don’t paint a full-subject mask by hand if an AI mask already nails it.

Free trial and affiliate code

New to DxO PhotoLab? Start with the free trial.

New DxO customers can use code EDALDRIDGE15 for 15% off.