Blend Modes in
Photoshop - 2
As you will recall from our first post in the series, blending modes are
the various ways that different layers and brushstrokes can be applied. We
covered the first half of the available blend modes in Part 1, which predominantly
affect the brightness and contrast of your image, with a few exceptions that
don’t fit anywhere else such as Dissolve.
Three simple terms we should discuss: base pixels, blend
pixels, and result pixels.
Base pixels are the pixels on the next layer below the
current one when you’re blending layers, or the pixels that are being painted
over when using a brush tool. Blend pixels are the pixels that you’re painting,
or the pixels that exist on the layer with the blend mode applied. Result
pixels are what you wind up seeing after Photoshop has computed how the various
blend layers will interact – your final result.
The blending modes we’re going to be looking at today tend to deal more
with occlusion and color changes, which makes them very useful for digital
artists and compositors.
Overlay
Overlay is one of the more useful blending modes, especially if
you’re working on a composite image piece. This is because Overlay is actually
a combination of two of the other more useful blending modes, Screen and
Multiply. If your blend pixels are dark, it functions like Multiply, and if
your blend pixels are light, it functions like Screen. The base pixels don’t
get replaced, but instead get mixed with your blend pixels to create a pleasing
composite (with a bit of careful tweaking).
Soft Light
This blend mode is also like a combination of two
other modes, in this case of Color Dodge and Color Burn. Blend pixels that are
lighter result in a dodged area, and blend pixels that are darker result in a
burned area. Pure black and pure white as blend pixels don’t create pure black
or pure white as a result pixel, just brighter or darker areas.
Hard Light
Hard light is essentially a more potent version of
Soft Light, with a more pronounced contrast-enhancing effect. With this mode,
pure black or pure white blend pixels create pure black or pure white result
pixels, so a gentle touch is often the best course of action.
Vivid Light
Vivid light is very similar to hard light, except that
it also creates a large increase in the saturation of your base pixels as well
as dramatically enhancing contrast. Sometimes, the two are indistinguishable.
Linear Light
I often wonder how these names were chosen – what
would “non-linear light” be, Adobe? Anyways, the linear light blending mode
works in a similar method to a combination of linear dodge and linear burn,
which brightens or darkens the image by adjusting brightness instead of
contrast.
Pin Light
This is another useful blend mode for compositors and
heavy editors, since it replaces base pixels with blend pixels, depending on
the brightness of the blend pixels. If the blend pixels are lighter than 50%
grey, darker base pixels are replaced. If the blend pixels are darker than 50%
grey, lighter base pixels are replaced. It can be a bit confusing, but
hopefully the image will help!
Hard Mix
It’s a bit hard to see when this would be a useful
effect to use, but nevertheless, it’s been in Photoshop for decades. RGB values
for each blend pixel are added to the RGB values of the corresponding base
pixel. As we know, RGB is measured between 0 – 255, and in this case if the sum
of each color channel is more than 255 it is converted to 255, and if it is
less than 255 it is converted to 0. This makes every channel either pure red,
pure green, pure blue, pure black, or pure white – though again, who knows why
you’d want to.
Difference
This is probably one of the most overused and abused
of Photoshop’s blending modes, thanks in no small part to the ‘Difference
Clouds’ filter and legions of people with Photoshop trial versions. This one is
a bit complex to explain, but playing around with it makes its results fairly
clear. Color values for each channel on both blend and base pixels are
compared, and the value of the darker pixel is subtracted from the value of the
brighter pixel. White creates a total inversion, and black does nothing at all.
Exclusion
Exclusion is simply a version of Difference with less
contrast. Sometimes I suspect that the Adobe engineers just enjoyed playing
with the mathematics, and didn’t really consider why it would be necessary to
include these at all.
Subtract & Divide
These two modes are as self-explanatory as they are
useless: Subtract subtracts the blend color value from the base color value,
and Divide divides the two.
Hue
This mode is actually starting to get back into the
realm of utility. It combines the luminosity and saturation values of the base
pixel with the hue value of the blend pixel.
Saturation
Similar to Hue, this combines the hue and luminosity
values of the base pixel with the saturation value of the blend pixel.
Luminosity
To round out the series, this mode combines the hue
and saturation values of the base pixel with the luminosity value of the blend
pixel.
Color
This mode retains the luminosity of the base pixel and
combines with the hue and saturation value of the blend pixel. This makes it
particularly useful for coloring black and white photos or tinting photos to a
certain color.
Lighter Color & Darker Color
These two modes are similar to Lighten and Darken,
except that they compare the color values of the base and blend pixels, and
display whichever is lighter or darker, respectively.
People see
God every day; the just don’t recognize Him ~ Pearl Bailey
This is a
journey – believe in what you’re doing!
All Photographs in this post/blog © Cheryl Howard
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