From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Blend Mode basics - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Blend Mode basics

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- [Instructor] In this video, we're going to take a look at how blend modes control the layer interaction between one another. But keep in mind, blend modes aren't limited to layers. They can be used with many of the painting tools and when adding layer effects like drop shadows. So in this document, I have two layers. The image of the rock, which is the background, which I'm going to call the base layer, although, it could be made of several different layers. And then we have the watch, which is photographed on a white background, which is the blend layer. So I'll be blending or applying the blend mode to the watch and it will blend with the base layer or all of the layers underneath it. Plus, we have these three swatches on the watch layer. The white, 50% gray, plus black. So the blend modes are grouped together in the list and they're separated by these thin lines. We'll start by talking about the first group, the Normal and Dissolve. So in Normal mode, there isn't any blending. We can change the opacity and it will blend with layers below it, but technically it's not a blend mode. Then we have Dissolve and there's no visible difference when the opacity is set to a hundred percent, but if we decrease the opacity, Photoshop starts blending the layers. So again, technically Dissolve isn't blending. It just picks one pixel from one layer or the other randomly, and it creates this speckled effect where the resulting color is either a color from the bottom layers or from the top layer. It's never a combination of the two. All right, so let's increase the opacity there, and let's take a look at the second group. So the second group of blend modes all have a stronger effect as the colors and tones in the blend layer, so that's the layer on top, becomes darker. So if we preview the effects, basically Darken, Multiply, Color Burn, Linear Burn, and Darker Color, they all get darker. And for all of the blend modes in this group, any pixels that are white, they're hidden, they just disappear. And you can see the white swatch is gone. Multiply is going to be the most common of these blend modes, and it just multiplies the top with the bottom color. So the third group of blend modes, they all have stronger effects as the colors and tones in the top layer become lighter. So these blend modes are the inverse of the previous group of blend modes. And when we go down through, Screen and Color Dodge and Linear Dodge and Lighten Color, they're all going to get lighter. And for all of the blend modes in this group, pixels that are black are hidden. So we can no longer see that black swatch. It is hidden and they just disappear. And Screen is going to be the most popular in the group. It's like multiply except that it multiplies the inverse of the top and base layers. All right, this fourth group, they're all going to add contrast to an image because any colors that are lighter than 50% gray, it will lighten, and any colors that are darker than 50% gray, they're going to be darkened. So Overlay and Soft Light are probably the two most commonly used blend modes in this group. And for all of the blend modes in this group, you'll notice that that 50% gray swatch has been hidden. So with Overlay, this blend mode multiplies the colors that are darker than 50% and it screens the colors that are lighter than 50%. That's how it adds the contrast. And because it's multiplying and screening, you're going to get a lot of contrast with Overlay. With Soft Light, this blend mode, it also adds contrast, but because it uses a gamma adjustment, the result is going to be a lot milder. These blend modes are commonly used to apply textures, like when you're compositing images together to help blend the edges and unify images that have different amounts of grain in them. All right, the fifth group of blend mode, we've got Difference, Exclusion, Subtract, and Divide. They all have scientific as well as creative applications, especially Difference because it has really interesting effects on color, but they really aren't used as often. And then there's the sixth group of blend modes. There's Hue, Saturation, Color, and Luminosity. So the easiest way to explain this is whatever the blend mode is named, that's what you keep from the top layer. So right now, we are keeping the hue from the top layer. If I move down, we're keeping the saturation. When I move down to the Color layer, it's going to keep the color of the top layer, and Luminosity will keep the luminosity of the top layer. The sixth group of blend modes are often used in combination with adjustment layers when you're creating hand colored or tinted effects, and they also help suppress color shifts when you're adding adjustment layers like curves. We'll take a look at several specific examples of when to use blend modes in the following videos, but before we wrap up, a quick shortcut. Each of the blend modes has the live preview when we roll over the name of the blend mode, but if you want to quickly cycle through the blend modes, you can select the Move tool or any tool that doesn't have a blend mode option for the tool in the Options bar, and then use Shift + + to move down through the blend modes or use Shift + - to go back up through the blend modes. Excellent. Next, we're going to take a look at more specific uses for the most popular blend modes.

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