Blending Modes in Photoshop Explained!

today I will show a magic trick actually today I will show you how to use blending modes in Photoshop so let's start hey guys it's pneumonia and welcome to not a really fun episode today I will talk about the blending modes in Photoshop they are really powerful and important tool to master so without further ado let the fun begin welcome to Photoshop guys let's start by showing you where you can find the blending modes here on the layers tab you have a drop-down menu with 27 different blending modes and we have another blending mode for groups and two more for tools like brushed clone stamp tool and so on we'll go through that a little bit later but before we start let me tell you what the blending modes are they're basically set of photoshop algorithms that will take a pixel from one layer and it will blend with the pixel from another layer or layers and it will produce a completely new result so now that you know what the blending modes are let's go and tell you something about each of them if you go here to drop down menu you can see that blending modes are splitted into six different groups first group we can call it normal and first blending mode is normal so now if I go and reveal this luminosity card luminosity card will help us to understand the blending modes a little bit better here we have black 50% gray and white color and here at the top we have black and then by increments of 10 percent all the way to complete white color this is 50% gray and so on alright and now this blending mode for for this luminosity card layer is set to normal normal blending mode and the next one here in the normal group dissolve will not blend pixels together it will just work with opacity or fill slider in Photoshop so now if you want to produce some kind of result we need to play with opacity slider and the only result to make this layer or more or less opaque and this is why we call this normal this soul blending mode is the same it will not do anything to your image until your start messing with opacity or the fill slider then you will see some specular hear something like grain or noise and actually I never ever use this blending mode in a layers if you know some useful application of this blending mode in a layers please let me know that in the comments I actually use these blending modes mode a lot but in a brush I will show really quickly create a new layer go to brush and then here in the modes I will set blending mode from normal to dissolve and I will use maybe white color let me see let's use white color and now if I paint with my color I will have this crazy effect of a brush I will have something even better if I lower the opacity a lot I will have something like this we can create maybe snow or maybe something like you will see dust or particles or anything that you want by adding blur to this layer let's use a Gaussian blur and depends of the blur amount you will see different effects something like crazy particles or I know something like smoke mist dust or anything else this is really nice and I use it all the time over the top of this we can add even more of these crazy particles and then blur it everything again and so on and so on you can play with that and achieve really nice and interesting result so that's the only time when I really when I'm really using this disown blending mode in a brush alright this was the first out of six groups of blending modes now let's go and check what the second group will do to an image right here you can see that second group contains five different blending modes and we can call that group darken because the final result will be darker version of that image that you're messing with and I like to call this group white because white color it's completely invisible to this group so first blending mode is darken and if I put this luminosity card into darken blending mode we will have this crazy effect the darkened blending mode will not blend pixels together it will just compare the pixels from the current layer and the layer or layers down below and it will show the darker pixels between those two or more layers that are in compression so as you can see here the white color is the brightest color here and because this blending mode will show you only the darker color that's why the white color is completely invisible and the black color it's 100% visible because that's the darkest color here in the scene and that's how the dark and blending mode works so let me show you the real-life example for example you can go and put maybe this kind of gradient into darken blending mode and as you can see we'll have this crazy effect and only the darker pixels will be visible from both layers but you can lower the opacity and you can produce something like reacting effect but there is even better example if you want to merge two layers together but you don't want to waste your time extracting the object from one layer to put it to another layer sometimes the darken blending mode will do the hard work for you so let me show that for example we have a birds layer here and if I want to extract only the birds to merge only those birds with this scene down below and I want to put the birds in here upper left corner if I don't want to waste my time extracting the birds and so on and so on I can use the darken blending mode if I put this in to darken blend you will see that only the birds become visible why because the birds are the darkest pixels on this layer and the sky down below it's darker than the sky on the birds layer and darken blending mode will show you only the darkest pixels I hope that you got it all right and let me share another thing the darken blending mode and darker color blending mode are basically the same it will give you the same result actually they're not exactly the same they are similar because darken blending mode will go through a red green and blue channel and compare the pixels from those channels and then produce final result as a darker version of pixels and darker color blending mode will go and only use a merged version of red green and blue channels and then produce a final result will be the director pixels between the current layer and the layer down below so if I go right here to this luminosity card here is the darken and here is the darker color as you can see there they're slightly different result between those two and the darkest value are basically the same result but here is the different result because of the process how they compare the pixels between two layers alright now let's go to next blending mode it's a multiply one of the commonly used blending mode in Photoshop together with screen overlay and soft light blending modes multiply blending mode will actually make your image darker by the percentage of the darkness of the current layer so what does it mean that means that here as you can see we have 100% darkness 50% darkness 1020 percent 10% and 0% darkness and because zero percent darkness will make your layer darker by dead percentage zero percent that's why the white core is completely invisible to multiply layer so if I move this to a girl now the girl it's 50 percent darker than it was before now it's 80 percent darker 90 percent darker 100 % darker if we put some color tint to it we will have image darker with that color tint so for example if you want to maybe darker the image by 50 percent only you can create a new layer and fill it with 50% gray and then we can put it 50 percent gray in multiply blending mode and the image will be exactly 50% darker or if you want to add some teams to it you can go to colors here use any color maybe red and go to brightness and set this to 50% now we have red color that is 50% with 50% darkness or luminosity and if we fill this layer with that red color now we will have the same image 50% darker with that red tint on it sometimes this is really really useful to use to your images okay and blending mode it's really useful if you want to get rid of white color for example let me show in this image we had these those debris and we want to get rid of white color we only want to have that crazy particles debris or I don't know what it is just put this layer into multiply blending mode and that's it as you can see we have perfectly clean image actually the white color it's perfectly gone or something like this if you want to use this explosion maybe you can put this into multiply blending mode and you will have this crazy effect like whoops maybe it's not appropriate but maybe why not it's matches with the face of this guy right or you can put it right here and put the title here and I don't know be creative do something but the point here is in a multiply blending mode the white color will gone completely so multiply blending mode get rid of the white color okay the next binding mode is color burn color burn will give you slightly darker result and a lot saturated then multiply so let me show you that if you go here and change from multiply to color burn you will have that saturated really direct effect and as you can see the white color is completely invisible to this color burn blending mode this is the same or really really similar as if you go here let's duplicate this layer and go to burn tool alright and just hard to burn your image that color burn effect basically do the same thing right here let me show this is with burn toll this is rich color burn right that's basically the same effect and the color burn is really useful if you want to burn your image slightly but with some color tint in it so let me show you if i duplicate this or create a new layer just new empty layer put that player into color burn blending mode let's use a brush maybe 10% it's okay now let's use some color greenish or let's let's leave the red car and for example I want to make this part darker but a little bit reddish too so I can go and just use a color burn blending mode and make this darker with a reddish tint in it this is really really nice maybe distance I want some reddish tint in it or piano to have that reddish tint and so on and so on you can add some reddish tint here in the sky at set or you can change the color to some green or blue I don't know and then add the darker blue version here to maybe this and so on and so on alright guys the next blending mode it's a linear burn it will give you a similar result like color burn with that difference that it will make less saturated effect and darker tones will be even darker so let me show you that let's delete this layer okay I don't need that and let's go here to low and luminosity car and change from color burn to linear burn as you can see it's not so saturated like color burn but the darker pixels are even darker and color burn and linear burn are tube of a blending modes that behave differently with opacity and fill slider so with opacity it will just make this more or less opaque but with a fill slider you will have really different result and I really love how the color burn behave with the fill so with a linear burn is the same fill will behave differently than Pass City and just play with that some effect will be better by changing the fill some will be better by change the opacity right and one more thing that color burn linear burn burn has it's something like this if you create a new layer and let's use some color maybe this one high percent opacity and just let's make the brush bigger with this like so double-click on that layer you will see here on the blending options you will see transparency shapes layer you can uncheck this and check this oh yeah sorry I didn't put this into color burn blending mode now you can uncheck this if you have slightly different effect to that layer and check this all right if you uncheck this it will be like this if you check it to be normal so sometimes if you uncheck that transparency it will behave better for some light sources like Sun streetlamps and so on and so on if you want to emphasize the light effect or of course you don't need to make this so saturated you can go and change the saturation maybe change the hue and so on you can change the lightness but you can play with that and see what kind of different result will be when this transparency shape layer is checked or unchecked right that's it let's delete this layer and let's go to the next blending mode alright we already covered this darker color is the same like darken with slightly difference how their they comparing the pixels between two layers so both darken and dark or are not blending pixels they're just comparing pixels from two or more layers and as a final result they'll show you the darker version of pixels between those layers or you guys the next group it's called lighten or how I like to call it black because the black color is completely visible to that group as for the previous group white color was completely invisible and this group it's completely opposite than a previous group and this group will always give you a brighter version of the same image as a final result so let's check it out alright guys as you can see here the first blending mode in the light group it's lightened and this blending mode it's completely opposite than the dark and then screen is completely opposite and multiply and so on and so on darker color it's completely opposite then a lighter color so if I put this layer in to lighten blending mode you will see this crazy result and same as a previous blending mode the lighten blending mode and the lighter core blending mode will not blend pixels together they will actually compare the pixels from both layer and as a final result they will show the brighter version of pixels between those two layers all right and as you can see here if I go to a lighter color I will have slightly different result because of that algorithm one is going through all channels another is going only to one merge Channel okay and the real-life example for a light and blending mode is really nice and I use it all the times okay let me show on another image here I have image of this light trails here and I have three different image with the same background this is shooted from a tripod and as you can see only difference is those light rest and as you know lighting blending mode will show only the lighter pixels between two layers so if I go right here and put the first layer into a light and blending mode I will only see addition to those light rails so I will have more light rails because everything else actually as you can see here one window on this building lights on that's great all right and that's how you can add lights to your images let's go to another layer and let's put this into lighting blending mode so now this is before this is after okay this is original then added one layer with light rest then another layer at the same way you can add or you can create star trails if you're shooting star photography right and then you shoot a few different images you need to shoot a lot of different images and then just set all of those layers to lighten blending mode we'll have really nice result really nice start rails try it if you if you are into a night photography alright let's go back to our document here and the next blending mode is screen screen blending mode it's completely opposite and multiply so that means that the screen blending mode will make your image brighter by the percentage of the lightness of the current layer so that means that this is 50% light light we can say that right and the image will be 50% lighter here is 0% lightness and that's why this screen blending mode will not see the black color and of course this is one higher percent lightness and the image will be completely washed out completely white all right and let me show you a real life example because the screen blending mode cannot see the black color it's ideal for images like this if you have smoke or anything on a black background then you want to really fast get rid of that black black background we'll just put that in a screen blending mode and you will see really nice effect of course it's the same here let me show you with this explosion if I put this into a screen blending mode everything black will go away and you can use that as a frame you can make it bigger I don't know you can play play with this you can create really nice and crazy effects with the screen blending mode let's undo these few times and that's it right the next blending mode is color dodge and that's completely opposite then color burn so let me show you that if I go here from screen to color dodge I will have this crazy washed out effect in highlights and the shadows actually the 100% black core will not affect the image because black color it's completely invisible to this blending mode and you can see the the image will be less saturated and less contrast than it was before that so this is basically like you're dodging your image you can change the fill or you can change the opacity you will have different results that's one of the eight blending modes that will have different result by changing the field and the the next landing mode is linear dodge is similarly color dodge but the brighter pixels will be even brighter and it will be even less contrasty and saturated so you can again change the fill or change the opacity it will have slightly different results and the last one it's lighter color it's what I already told you the being similar like light and blending mode with a slightly different algorithm alright guys the next group is called contrast group because all of those blending modes will add some kind of conscious to your image and I like to call it a gray group because fifty percent gray color it's completely invisible to all blending modes in that group except the hard mix blending mode we will cover that in a second so let's check it out if I switch this from a lighter color to an ex-drug to overlay you will see we will have a lot contrast their image except a 50% gray color that is completely invisible it will not impact the image and overlay blending mode will do like this everything that is darker than 50% gray on those pixels will be applied multiply blending mode and on all pixels that are brighter than 50% gray on those pixels will be applied screen blending modes so overlay blend mode is basic combination of multiply and screen blending mode and overlay blending mode it's the only blending mode in that group that makes calculation it's a base of the luminosity of the pixels on the base layer on the layer down below all others all other blending modes in that group will make calculations based of the luminosity pixels of the current layer right and overlay blending mode has its own pair or we can say its own commute layer and that's the hard light if I go to hard light you will see that this is more similar with the multiply and screen blending mode because hard light makes calculation based of the current layer and what does mean that hard light and overlay are pair or commute layers that means if we switch the position of those layers and then switch the blending modes will have completely exactly result let me show that for example here we have a luminosity blending mode set on hard light blending mode and I will merge both layers together into a new layer to have that as a copy which hit ctrl alt T or Z command option e like so and now if I change blending mode to normal from luminosity for luminosity card and switch the position of those layers put the bottom layer at the top of this luminosity card and then put this layer into overlay blending mode I will have completely same result this is result when the bottom layer is over the top luminosity card and this is a result that we had before that luminosity card was over the top of bottom layer and it was set to hard light here okay and as you can see completely same result no difference at all it would be the same if we put this into a hard light blending mode we will have this this result and then go down below and put this into aurélie so that's why those there's our pair or commute that's really handy to know sometimes that you can switch the layers position and then use different blending modes the next blending mode will be soft light and you will see that soft light is basically a softer lighter version of overlay blending mode so if I move from overlay to soft light you will see practically a similar result but a little bit softer with a soft light blending mode of course you can use overlay and soft light blending mode for maybe dodging and burning a lot of you guys are familiar with that technique to dodge and burn with a 50% gray layer set in overlay or screen blending mode if you want to know more about dodging burning you can check my tutorial about that right here alright guys the next blending mode is hard light we already covered that and highlight is basically commuted layer to overlay so let's go to the next one it's weird light we would like it's basically a stronger version of overlay blending mode and it's white one of eight blending modes that behave differently if you're lowering the opacity and the fields so I like to lower the feel here and then to some amount and then lower the opacity to achieve desired result bread let's go to next blending mode this is a linear right linear right this combination of linear dodge and linear burn and it worked like this 50% gray is completely invisible all the pixels that are brighter than 50% gray and those pixels will be applied a linear dodge blending mode and on all pixels that are darker than 50% gray will be applied a linear burn blending mode I like to use the linear light when I sharpening the image of course you can use the overlay and soft light too but I prefer a linear light let's show you really quickly let's hide this and make copy of this layer by pressing ctrl command J right and let's go to filter other high pass and let's zoom it a little bit let's see the rate radius may be 0.5 and you can see that this is basically 50% gray layer except some edges here has that darker and brighter stroke around the edges and this is really nice because now if you put this in overlay blending mode you will see let's zoom it a little bit you will see before and after the image seems a little bit sharper because the edges has more contrast in it if you put in a soft light the effect will be a little bit subtle but if you put it the linear light it will have really strong effect and sometimes this is really nice for high resolution images to sharpen them of course you can always lower the opacity or put the mask and sharpen only some parts that you want to be sharper okay we have another one it's pin light pin light it's combination of darken and light and blending mode and this is really useful if you want in the same time to prepare the brightest and the darkest pixels of two or more layers and now as the last blending mode of this group we have a hard mix car mix it's really crazy blending mode that will give you as a final result only the base color from RGB or CM why kaikoura spectrum so let me show you that if I put this luminosity card into her mix you will see this crazy effect and you will see only colors red green blue CN magenta cyan magenta and the yellow of course black and white and this is sometimes useful for example if you want to create a new layer and use some color let's use red again or something like like so fill it with that color and now put it in her mix you can see it's really crazy result but if you lower the fill or opacity you will have slightly different results so I like to lower the fill a little bit and then lower the opacity and you can colorize the image for example maybe this image it's better a better example you can colorize see to add some kind of purplish pinkish tinge to it and that's basically it for this group the next blending mode group it's called inversion and that group will blend layers based on their difference so let's check that let's duplicate our background layer here and let's go to our inversion group we have difference exclusion subtract anti-white blending modes in this group so difference blending mode will compare the pixels between two layers and if the pixels are identical the result will be black color so if we have two identical layers we will have as a result completely black layer so let me show difference we have completely black layer the difference blending mode is really useful if you want to align two layers together if I go to move tool and nudge it not this layer on a keyboard you will see now this these two layers are not identical because one it's not move to one side and if you want to align those two layers together you know that they are perfectly aligned when they are completely black so now they're perfectly aligned and there that's where the different blending mode it's really useful right the next blending mode in this group its exclusion and I really love to use that blending mode when I'm doing a color correction to an image so let me show you how it works let's delete this letter we don't need it anymore Anna let's reveal our luminosity card put it in exclusion blending mode and let's see what this blending mode does to an image you can see that black color will not affect the image 50% gray will stay 50% gray and white color will completely invert the colors of the base layer of the layer down below so how we can use this in our advantage how we can apply this exclusion blending mode to real-life example let me show you really quickly let's hide this luminosity layer and let's create solar core adjustment layer let's use first start black color and put this into exclusion blending mode as you already saw the black color will not affect the image but what happens if we change the color maybe add some darker bluish tint you can see that now the shadows are becoming bluish and the highlights are becoming opposite of the blue that's yellow it will have that yellowish tint maybe this image is a better example you will see here better the highlights will have that yellowish tint and the shadows will have that bluish tint of course those are complementary colors and any colors you choose for shadows the highlights will have that complementary color of that so this is how I like to use it to colorize my image to edit split toning effect right next to blending modes or subtract and divide subtract blending mode will just subtract the pixels value from the base layer and the result will be really dark color when subtracting the lightness and the same or no effect when subtracting the darkness the divide blending mode will do the opposite let me show you really quickly all right we have a luminosity card and let's put it in subtract blending mode and as you can see here as luminosity of the current layer goes higher when the pixels are brighter the final result will be darker the black hole will not affect the image and divide will give you the completely opposite result here as the luminosity goes darker the final result will be bright image and here the white color will not affect the image red guys in the final group for this blending mode is called component and I like to call it a color group because it will affect the colors and luminosity of your image let me show you that we don't need this luminosity card we'll just need a new empty layer and I will put this empty layer into hue blending mode and if I use the brush tool with some color and paint here on the image I will have lose 100 percent opacity I will just change the hue value of the base layer of the layer down below and luminosity will stay intact as you can see here I can make the whole image basically purplish because I will change the hue to this purple or pinkish pinkish hue actually alright that's how the hue impact image this is great if you want to use a brush to change the hue of some colors on the image right the next blending mode is saturation and situation red moly just change the situation of the image will not mess with hue or lightness so let me show that really quickly if I go here and put the saturation let's go hipsterish put iteration all the way to 100% of Sun color and now put this blending mode in saturation and paint over it will have this crazy result as you can see because I am boosting the saturation of the base layer of the layer down below all the way to 100% this is the same if I create a new Q a saturation adjustment layer and boost the saturation all the way to 100% you can see that this result and this result are basically the same okay now let's delete this and this and let's go to next blending mode and its color color blending mode sorry I don't need this layer I need new empty layer color blending mode is really handy when you want to colorize something especially when you want to colorize black-and-white images let me show if i duplicate this and discolor eyes it make it black and white with keyboard shortcut shift control your ship command you on a Mac and now choose the color maybe not so saturated but something like so and I would just want to paint over the dress I will give this dress color I will not mess with the luminosity luminosity will stay the same I will just add a color or maybe I want to add a bluish color to sky here I will add that bluish color to the sky you can just use this technique to paint black and white layers images red maybe I want to add some orange orange look to the Sun here and like so you can really nicely paint anything on image this is really quickly sloppy job but nevermind let's make this green and so on and so on this is how you can paint the image and this is how the color layer look within a normal blending mode adjust some colors over the top and you can just put it in color blending mode and paint over the image or you can just change the color of the current colored image like so you can see this is you can really really nicely change the color alright let's delete that and let's see the last blending mode its luminosity this is really really nice and handy blending mode this blending mode will and not mess with a hue or color it will just change the luminosity it's really popular for example if you're adding contrast to an image using curves for example let's use the curves and if you add a contrast the contrast will boost the saturation but if you put this blending mode to luminosity then you will only play with luminosity by adding a contrast you will not add a saturation of this image so this is really nice and handy way to do it another example to play with the luminosity blind mode is to maybe go to black and white adjustment layer put it in luminosity and now you can play with color luminosity you can make the sky darker you can make the dress brighter or completely black you can change the Sun to black if you want and so on and so on this is another really nice example all right guys that was it for layers blending mode now let me show how the groups works with the blending modes okay let's delete this layer because I don't need it anymore Anna let's go here reveal this layer create group put this layer inside the group and maybe use the cursor justement layer put it in a group and I need one more maybe this explosion okay now I have three layers inside this group and if I go to group you can see that group is set on a passed through adjustment layer what does it means that means that if I change maybe I will hide this if I change the brightness of the curse I will affect all layers that are inside that group and all layers that are below that group but if I go and put the blending mode of group from pass through to normal then I will affect only the layers that are inside that group and same is for this if I go and put this into multiply blending mode right this explosion and my group is set into normal blending mode that multiply blending mode will affect only two layers that are inside the group if I hide this layer down below it will not have an effect to the layers down below but if I go from a normal to pass through this multiply blending mode inside the group will affect all layers down below that's really useful to know because sometimes you want to have a judgement layers inside that group that will affect only the group sometimes you want to affect all other layers okay and we have another adjustment layers and that's our adjustment layers for the brushes we have two new adjustment layers this is behind and clear behind works like this let's use the color may be read create a new layer and let's put it out of the group and let's paint it here if I paint here with red and then I choose another color maybe blue okay I will paint over dread but nothing happens because actually I'm now painting behind that red you can see red will not be affected or if I choose third color maybe green I will paint behind those two layers basically this is what behind adjustment layer does Deniz sorry behind blending mode if I choose a clear this blending mode behaves like a brush I can just brush all out from this layer and that's it right guys that's finally it for today it was a longer tutorial but this topic it's really important to master I hope that you liked this tutorial and that you learn something new today if you have any questions at all regarding today's episode please leave them in the comments below I will be glad to answer them if you want to support me on this channel to make it even bigger and better you can do it by visiting my patreon page the link is down there in the description and of course you will get some things in return all right guys subscribe if you're not already ring that bell to get notified about the future episodes and see you in the next one bye bye

Channel: Nemanja Sekulic

Views: 56,393

Rating: 4.975246 out of 5

Keywords: Blending modes, Blend mode, Blend, Photoshop, How to use blending modes in photoshp, Tutorial, Nemanja Sekulic, Multiply, Opacity, Soft Light, Color Burn, Linear light, Luminocity, Dissolve, Screen, Lighten, Darken, Difference, Exclusion, Blending, explained, Blending Modes Explained, blending modes in photoshop, Commuted, All blending modes explained, Photoshop blending modes, How to

Id: 7KDv9xjbbiE

Length: 38min 56sec (2336 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2018