From the course: Photoshop 2021 Essential Training: Design

Using blend modes to unify images - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2021 Essential Training: Design

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Using blend modes to unify images

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- [Instructor] Photoshop has a lot of different blend modes, but when compositing images together there are four that I find to be most useful. Multiply, screen, overlay, and soft light. Let's take a look at multiply. If I want to add this edge effect and I only want the black edges to appear then I will change the blend mode to multiply. The multiply blend mode will multiply this top layer with the layers underneath and a resulting color is always going to be darker and white will disappear. Now let's undo that. What if I wanted the opposite effect? So I want white edges. Then I would choose the Image Menu, Adjustments, and invert the layer. So now I have the white edges and then I would change the blend mode to screen. And the screen blend mode the resulting color is always going to be lighter and black will disappear. However, if we undo that we can see that there are a lot of shades of gray still in the center portion of this image. And that's why when I choose screen it doesn't disappear completely. So in order to remove it, I'll add a curves adjustment layer. And then in the Properties panel I'll click in order to create a clipping mask. Then in order to darken down the black, I'll move the input slider over to the right. As it darkens it down, the black will disappear because the underlying layer is in screen mode. I think I've gone a little too far so we can always readjust that by just clicking and dragging in the curve. Another great use for the screen blend mode would be to hide all of the black in this image so that we only see the eclipse. On the layers panel, I'll switch to the screen blend mode, and now I can use the move tool in order to reposition that anywhere in the image area. Another great example of the multiply blend mode would be to isolate the birds from the background. In this case, after setting it to multiply because the sky isn't pure white I'll need to add another adjustment layer by selecting curves and then creating a clipping mask. But this time I'll want to move the white point slider over to the left in order to remove that edge. We also have a few too many birds here in the edge area. So on the birds layer, I'm going to click and add a layer mask, tap B to select the brush tool. And then I'll just paint with black in that edge area in order to remove any of those birds that I don't want. Now to overlay a texture such as this one, I'll either choose the overlay or the soft light blend mode. I think soft light is a little too subtle but overlay is a bit too harsh so I can always decrease the opacity in order to fade it back a little bit. Then I'll click on the cloudy day layer, make it visible and this time because I want it very subtle, I'll choose soft light. Again, I'll decrease the opacity and we can see the resulting effects by toggling on and off the eye icon. Finally, when I added that initial curves adjustment layer and I darkened down the edge, I lost some of the detail in the edge area. So on the curves mask with my brush tool selected, I'll get a bit larger of a brush and then just paint with black around the edge in order to hide the curves adjustment layer and make the transition between the edge and the border a little bit more subtle. So there you go. Multiply, screen, overlay and soft light. The four most common blend modes when compositing images in Photoshop.

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