10 Blend Tips in 10 minutes in Adobe Photoshop - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ Class

1. 10 Photoshop Blend Tips in 10 minutes - Introduction: Hello, I'm Helen Bradley. Welcome to this graphic design for lunch class 10; blend tips in 10 minutes in Adobe Photoshop. Graphic design for lunch is a series of classes that teach a range of tips and techniques for creating designs and for working in applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate. Today we're looking at how you can use blend modes in Photoshop to do things like rescuing and underexposed or overexposed image, extracting lines from an image, non-destructive, dodging and burning, lining up layers, adding adjustable noise, re-coloring, high-pass sharpening, adjusting brightness and not color and isolating smoke and fire and a whole lot more. As you're working through these videos, you'll see a prompt which let's you recommend this class to others. Please, if you're enjoying the class, do two things for me. Firstly, give it a thumbs up and secondly, write in just a few words, why you're enjoying the class. These recommendations help other students to see that this is a class that they too might enjoy. If you'd like to leave a comment or a question for me, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. If you're ready now let's get started on our 10 blend mode tips in 10 minutes. 2. Pt 1 - Before We Start: Before we get started on this class, I'm assuming you know how to do a few things in Photoshop that you can open an image and duplicate a layer. I'm also assuming that you know how to get to the last pallet by choosing window and then layers, and that you've possibly used a blend mode in the past. You may also know that blend modes need to be applied to the topmost layer because they impact how this layer interacts with the layers below. Sometimes, blend modes will do nothing. I've just selected the darken blend mode for this layer and it's done nothing to this image because the darken blend mode doesn't do anything when you're working with two images that are identical, but as we go through the course, you're going to learn some other blend modes that will have impact on an image even when applied to the topmost of two identical layers. 3. Pt 2 - 10 tips (and a bonus tip): It's easy to rescue an underexposed image using blend modes. Open up the last pallet and drag and drop the background layer onto the new layer icon to make a duplicate. From the blend modes drop-down list, select "Screen". Screen is a lightening blend mode and it will always lighten an image. If this is not light enough, take the layer you just created and drag and drop it onto the new layer icon. You get another duplicate layer with the screen blend mode already applied. If this is too much, you can always back off the opacity of this top-most layer. In a similar way you can also use blend modes to save an overexposed image. If you want to add a little bit more detail and darkness to an image, you can use blend modes to do it. Open the image and in the last pallet take the background layer and drag and drop it onto the new layer icon. This time use the multiply blend mode. The multiply blend mode always darkens an image when it's applied to the topmost layer of two identical layers. If this effect is too much, back-off the opacity of the topmost layer to suit. You can use a blend mode technique to extract lines from an image. For this image, I'm going to drag and drop the background layer onto the new layer icon. I'll choose image, adjustments, desaturate to make it black and white. I'm going to take a further copy of this black and white layer and I'm going to invert it by choosing image, adjustments, invert. Now I'll blend this in using linear dodge blend mode. The image should go pure white. Now we'll apply a blur to this top-most layer to extract the lines. Filter, blur. You could choose Gaussian blur, but you can also use motion blur. You want to use a blur where you can see the results on the image. Adjust the distance and angle to suit until you get lines that you like and click "Okay". To make these lines permanent, right-click the topmost layer and choose "Merge down". You now have a layer with the lines on it. If you want to make them darker, choose "Image", "Adjustments", "Levels", and adjust the levels until you get the image that you want. Here I'm going for just the lines with no gray in the middle. I'll click "Okay". I can now use these lines for editing the image. For example, if I blend them into the image using the multiply blend mode, I'm going to darken the darkest areas of the image. There's the before and here's the after. Dodge and burn are handy ways to highlight and add shadows to an image. We're going to do it non-destructively by adding a new layer to this image. I'm going to hold Alt or Option as I click on the new layer icon. This gives me the opportunity to select the blend mode of the new layer which we'll set to overlay. Because I chose overlay or soft light, I can now choose to fill this with an overlay neutral color of 50 percent gray, which I want to do. I'll click "Okay". That's a nice shortcut way of filling a layer with 50 percent gray. I'm going now to the burn tool, this will darken areas of the image. I'm using mid tones with a fairly low exposure. Now I can just paint on this layer in the areas where I want to darken the image. The reverse of course, is dodging the image. I'll select the dodge tool, set my range to mid tones. I'm going to reduce my exposure to about 39, 40 percent. Now I can just brush on in the areas that I want to add a highlighting effect to the image. This is on now I removable layer which can be turned on or off, but you can also adjust the opacity of the layer to reduce the effect if desired. The high pass filter allows you to quickly sharpen an image based on the edges in the image, not the softer detail. To do this we'll drag a duplicate of the background layer onto the new layer icon. With it selected, choose "Filter", "Other", "High pass". What you're looking for here is for the detail to be brought back into the image. But you want to stop before you start getting color back in the image. I'm thinking here, a radius of about nine or 10 is going to give me the best results. I'll click "Okay". Now if I blend this layer into the underlying image using the soft light blend mode, I'll get the desired sharpening effect. Let's zoom in here. This is the before image and this is the sharper version of the image. Using blend mode, you can very easily recolor elements in an image. I already have selected this orange macaron. I'm going to click to create a brand new layer in this image. I have purple selected as my foreground color. I'm going to select a nice soft brush, so, I've got a nice circular soft brush. It's going to make it a little bit bigger, and I'm going to paint over my orange macaron with the purple. I'll deselect the selection by pressing "Control" or "Command D". Now I'll blend the color paint effect in with the underlying layer using one of two blend modes. Choose the one that looks best to you, either hue or color. You can add adjustable noise to an image using a blend mode. I'm going to Alt or Option click on the new layer icon. I'm going to set the blend mode to soft light and choose to fill this new layer with neutral color, I'll click "Okay". At this point you should see no change at all in your image. I'll choose "Filter", "Noise", "Add Noise", and then I can select the noise that I want to add to my image. I'm going to add quite a bit just so you can see it clearly and click "Okay". This noise can be blended back into the image using either soft light or overlay blend mode. If it's too much, you can reduce the opacity on this layer. It's also fully removable by just turning off the layer visibility. Use a blend mode to line things up. I have an image here with two pieces of content from a website. I've got part of an image here and part of the image here. There's an overlap but neither of these is a perfect rendition of this image. I'm going to select the topmost layer here. I'm going to set its blend mode to difference, and now I'm going to start moving it down. What I'm looking for here is when the area that is black goes totally black. Because when you're working in different blend mode and you put two layers on top of each other that are identical, they'll go black. I know that these two layers are now perfectly aligned. I'll set the blend mode back to normal, and this is now the entire image. The overlap is perfectly lined up. A curves adjustment layer is a good way to add a little bit of contrast to an image. I'll drag up on the top end of the curve and down on the bottom end of the curve. That adds contrast. But as you can see, it's also added some unwanted color. If I blend this curves adjustment in using luminosity as the blend mode, I get the contrast enhancement but not the color. You can use blend modes when you're creating composites that involve smoke and fire. Here I have an image of smoke that I want to blend into the image underneath. Making a selection would be hours of work. However, if I select this layer and apply the screen blend mode, the black disappears and I'm left just with the smoke. The same approach would work if you're working with fire that's been photographed against a black background. The bonus tip for this class is that the same blend modes that you've been using on layers in Photoshop also work with brushes. I've got some red paint here and a brush. I've got it set to normal blend mode and an image with some dots on a black background, and they're all on a single layer. Not unsurprisingly, if I paint with red, this is what happens. But if I set the blend mode to darken and then start painting with red, something very different happens. The red is isolated to the shapes where it's going to darken the colors, but it doesn't affect the black. Other blend modes like screen will also give you different effects. Here when I paint with red in the screen blend mode, it's having no effect at all on the white circle, but it certainly is affecting the black background. I suggest that you experiment with blend modes and brushes to see what effects you can create. 4. Project and Wrap Up: Your project for this class is really simple. What I'd like you to do is to head over to the class project area and just post a note telling me which of these tips you think is going to be the most benefit to you. I hope that you've enjoyed this class and that you've learnt something that you didn't already know about blend modes in Photoshop. As you're watching these videos, you will have seen a prompt which lets you recommend this class to others. Please, if you enjoyed the class, do two things for me. Firstly, give it a thumbs up and secondly, write in just a few words why you enjoyed the class. These recommendations help other students to say that this is a class that they too might enjoy. If you'd like to leave a comment or a question for me, please do so. I read and I respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look at and I respond to all of your class projects. My name's Helen Bradley. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of graphic design for lunch, and I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming episode soon.