Lesson 9 - Blending Modes

Lesson 9

Blending Modes

A blending mode takes two colour values and combines them using a formula.
It is helpful to think in terms of the following colours when visualizing a blending mode’s effect:
• The result colour is the colour resulting from the blend as determined by the formula.
• The blend colour is the colour being applied with the painting or editing tool, or the colour in the layer to which the blend mode is applied (ie the Blend layer).
• The base colour is the original colour in the image ( ie the colour resulting from all the layers below).



Blending Modes are used in two situations :-
1. Painting Tools - To specify how pixels in the image are affected by a painting or editing tool such as the Paint Brush, Healing Brush, Clone Stamp, History Brush, Gradient, and Paint Bucket Tools. (The Blur, Sharpen and Smudge Tools use a subset of the Blend Modes.)
2. Layers - To determine how the pixels in one layer interact with the pixels in the layers below it.

Despite the great variety of blending modes, for the purposes of tonal and colour correction we tend to use just a few of them, as follows :-
- Multiply to build density,
- Screen to reduce it,
- Soft Light and Hard Light to increase contrast,
- Colour to change colour balance without affecting luminosity, and
- Luminosity to sharpen images without introducing colour fringes

You can reduce the effect of a Blending Mode by reducing the opacity of the layer.


Blending Modes Exercise


Light & Dark

Original



Edited



Combining Images

Original







Edited




Creative Tone

Original



Edited






Exercise 11 – Multi-Version PSD File


1. Select a RAW file of your choice.
2. Use ACR to ‘clean up’ the image ie correct any tonal deficiencies, straighten, crop
3. Export the image to Photoshop as a smart object.
4. Using non-destructive techniques create a layer set that creates a BW toned version of the image.
5. Create another layer set that produces a partially coloured / partially B/W version of the image.
6. You should now have three versions of the image in one PSD file.
7. Save the document as ‘Ex 11 – Multi-version-PSD.psd’
8. How would you do the same thing using Lightroom ?
By creating virtual copies of the source/original file and then applying adjustments

9. What are the advantages / disadvantages of each approach ?

Lightroom:

- Three diferent files which you can view at the same time

Photoshop:
- All versions in same file
- Saves space
- Cannot see all files at once


Original


B&W



Partial Colour/B&W