From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Using Multiply, Screen, Overlay, and Soft Light - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Using Multiply, Screen, Overlay, and Soft Light

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- [Instructor] Let's take a moment to look at a practical application of four of the most popular blend modes for compositing images together, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, and Soft Light. We have a number of different layers in this file. We have an edge layer, an eclipse layer, some birds, and a texture, and a cloudy day. And we're going to composite all of these together simply using blend modes. So I'll start with the edge file and I'm going to set the blend mode to multiply. That will get rid of any white and then multiply all of the other values together so that we have black edges, and we get this texture from the paper. If I wanted the opposite of that, I could choose Image and then Adjustments and invert to invert the contents of the layer, and then instead of selecting multiply, we could change this to screen. If I want to add the eclipse, I certainly don't want to try to select the white area. So again, I'll use blend modes and just set that to screen. That will drop out all of the black values. Then we have all of these birds that I want to add. Here, I want to keep the birds, but drop out the white. So I'll use multiply, although I can see a line here along the edge of the file. So I'm going to add a curves adjustment layer, and then I'm going to use this icon right here to create a clipping mask so that when I bring down the curve or I increase the curve, it's only going to affect the layer that it's clipped to, in this case, the birds, and we no longer see that line. If I don't want these birds around the edge, I'll return to the bird's layer, add a layer mask, tap B to select my paintbrush, and making sure that I'm painting with black at 100%, I'll just paint around the edge of the image. All right, to unify the layers, I can add this texture. I'll make it visible and target it. And then I'm going to change the blend mode to either overlay or soft light. I think overlay is too harsh, so I'll choose soft light, and if soft light was even too harsh, then we could decrease the opacity of the layer. Then I'm going to add these clouds and let's use a keyboard shortcut. I'm going to tap V to select the Move tool and then Shift + + to go down through all the different blend modes. So this is a nice way where I can keep my eye on the screen and I don't have to be looking at the list of blend modes as I move down through them. Well, difference is rather cool, but I'm going to keep on going here down to the end. All right, well, I think that my favorite was probably multiply, so let's choose that from the list and then just decrease the opacity a little bit. I've noticed that the white has gone a little bit dim from the edge file, so I'll bring that up to the top of the layer stack, but the whole image is a little bit too light, so I'll add another curves adjustment layer, and then move the black point over to the right. Excellent. There you go. An overview as to when you might want to use multiply, screen, overlay, and soft light blend modes in Photoshop.

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