Opacity vs Flow vs Fill in Photoshop: Explained

so what do you think is this a sketch pen right but this is not just a regular sketch pen i lost the cap so therefore it's a dried sketch pin now what happens when you run a sketch pin over a piece of paper what happens the ink from the sketch pen flows from the sketch pen to the paper right now underline the word flow now since this is a dried sketch pen the flow of ink would be lower right so when you run it once of course the ink flow would be lower and hence the color would be a little lighter a little more transparent however if you run it at the same place again and again what happens it gets darker and darker that's exactly what flow is now i have a lot of greens on my hands but understand that flow just controls the flow of ink from the brush let me share this with you inside photoshop back at the magical world of photoshop and this video is brought to you by envato elements the number one place for creative assets check the link in the description for some awesome discounts and amazing actions now back to photoshop and if we go ahead and select the brush tool with a soft round brush and we just decrease the flow to about 10 percent and keep the opacity at about 100 when we start painting the flow of ink from the brush is lower at 10 percent however without lifting your hand from the tablet or without letting go of the button on the mouse if you continue to paint at the same place it gets darker and darker this quite doesn't happen with opacity opacity on the other hand is very different from flow it is how opaque or transparent a particular element is as a whole for example here i have a phone and let me turn on the torch very quickly and let's take a piece of paper and if we put the phone with the torch behind the paper you can still see the light right so this is a little bit transparent or in other words we can say that its opacity is low if we want to increase the opacity of this paper we cannot just paint paper over it like we could do with flow we just have to bring on another paper and if we put both of these two papers together and then we put the light behind it you can see less of the light and if we put a bunch of papers and then put the light behind it you just cannot see the light which means it's at 100 opacity so that's the basic deal here with opacity the entire element as a whole is considered so let me share this with you in photoshop so let's go back to how we were all right now let's take the same brush this time increase the flow to about 100 and if we decrease the opacity to about 10 percent and then if we paint without lifting our hand or letting go of the button on the mouse if we paint all right this is very light however if we paint over the same area again and again and again and again it doesn't make it darker what did we learn opacity controls how opaque or transparent an element is as a whole so as a complete brush stroke how transparent it is that's what opacity controls in other words we also have opacity in layers right so if we create a new layer and if we paint over it no matter how many times we are painting at the same position it's not getting darker unlike flow however if you let go of the brush and paint over that area again it will put another layer over it just as we did with the papers remember or in other words you can also put it like this in here you have opacity with layers just increase the opacity to 100 if we paint something here all right and decrease the opacity to ten percent and then if we create one more layer and decrease its opacity to ten percent and then paint over it it's the exact same thing so in other words you can say that creating another brush stroke is like creating another layer with the opacity value that you have chosen i hope that makes sense to you back again in the brilliant world of photoshop and if you wish to license this image or download a preview for free check the links in the description so let's say if we choose white and we create a brand new layer all right and if we take the brush with a hard round brush let's choose the brush with no pressure to avoid confusion and if we just dab right over here just a random dab if we decrease the opacity it just increases its transparency right so if the opacity is at 50 percent with the layers we're talking about the layer opacity right now not the tool opacity that is at the top so if the opacity is at 50 this is how it looks however there's one more setting here that is called fill now what is the difference between these two if we set the fill to 50 percent it gives the same look right so what is the difference there fundamentally two major differences let's start with the first one and that is layer styles so if we write something at the top let's type in travel and to make this fancy to make any text fancy first of all let's double click on the t to select all the text hold the alt key or the option key and the right arrow key to just space it out this is called tracking and typography so it's spaced out let's make it a little larger it just makes it more luxurious now to make it more exciting you might want to add a drop shadow by double clicking on the right hand side of the layer this opens up the layer styles dialog box so you can choose any one of these let's go ahead and choose drop shadow because that's the most common and we're going to choose a dark color of green and put the shadow a little bit to the right hand side increase the opacity and just increase the size like this all right now what happens if you decrease the opacity it just makes the whole thing transparent right however if you decrease the fill it just affects the content of the layer and not the layer style so if you just decrease the fill have a look what happens the shadow is still there however the actual content is gone now this creates a wonderful effect right here as well it's like travel is just emerging out of course you might want to go back to drop shadow and just increase the opacity and probably increase the size from right here and maybe spread it a little bit to make it more visible so that's also one effect that you can go for you might also want to move the shadow here and there to make everything properly visible and that's also an effect that you can do lots of possibilities here the second difference here is more exciting that's with the special blend modes there are eight special blend modes which are on the screen right now to which opacity and fill react differently for example if we go ahead and create a simple gradient let's go ahead and choose gradients from the adjustment layer options and here let's choose a color this seems to be an exciting color hit okay hit okay again now one of the eight special blend modes is of course hard mix right here now it looks terrible i know it it looks like it has no use if you decrease the opacity it just decreases the overall transparency of this thing and it doesn't change anything else however if you decrease the fill the projection changes the way the blend mode reacts changes so let's try decreasing the fill and have a look this is a completely different game so let's decrease it even further so we can choose a lower fill at about 1920 this creates a very nice effect here let's take a look here's the before here's the after pretty nice isn't it and of course you can play with the gradient so you can play with the angle right here and create some interesting effects we can keep it right here and this creates a nice gradient a beautiful light if you will hit okay so that my friend is the difference sorry about that between opacity fill and flow so to wrap it up flow controls the flow of ink from the brush it can also be an eraser works on the same principle if you are painting something with a lower flow the flow would be low but if you paint in the same area again and again of course it would become more and more intense or in other words more and more opaque as it happens in real life however with opacity the whole element is considered so if you create a brush stroke and set the opacity to 10 as a whole no matter what you do with the brush stroke no matter how many times you paint at the same place as a whole the transparency or in other words opacity more technical term would be at ten percent so with opacity every time you add a brush stroke it is just as same as creating a new layer with the value of opacity that you have chosen fill on the other hand is different in a lot of ways first of all it doesn't exist with tools like the brush tool or the eraser tool unlike opacity and flow secondly when you decrease the film it just increases the transparency of the content of the layer and not the layer style that you add to it for example if you add a drop shadow and you decrease the fill the shadow would still be there but the text that we just added the transparency of that increases phil also has one more very interesting property that you can use and just experiment with and that is it reacts differently to the eight special blend modes than opacity so if you decrease the fill if one of those blend modes are selected it controls the projection opacity on the other hand just controls the overall transparency thank you so much for watching i hope you learned something new and if you did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss any of the future tips tricks or tutorials i would like to take this moment to thank all these nice and amazing people for supporting fixing perfect on patreon and helping keep fixing perfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for watching i'll see you in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] you

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 189,175

Keywords: opacity vs flow in photoshop, opacity vs fill, photoshop basics, photoshop tutorial for beginners, special blend modes, layer styles, adobe, tutorial, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: Vsk4bh4j3WQ

Length: 9min 52sec (592 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 20 2021