Monday, April 1, 2013

Blending Modes in Photoshop Elements

I wanted to experiment with Blending Modes from the Layers palette. This is the original photo.


First I removed the background from the photo by using the eraser tool in the soft brush mode for outlining, and in the hard brush mode to erase the rest. Then I added the clouds as a new layer. This is what it looked like without any blending modes applied.

Normal
Next I applied various blending modes from the Layers Palette to the portrait layer. I left the opacity at 100% but that is another variable that can be used for different results.
Darken (white becomes transparent)
Multiply (produces rich tones)
Colour Burn (more exaggerated than Multiply)
Linear Burn (even more exaggerated)
Lighten (colour is washed out)
Screen (white is opaque)
Colour Dodge (more exaggerated than Screen)
Linear Dodge (even more exaggerated)
Overlay (combination of Multiply and Screen)
Soft Light (used for reflections)
Hard Light (strong colour tones)
Vivid Light (stronger colour tones)
Linear Light (strongest colour tones)
Pin Light (uses the tones of the base image)
Difference (colour is subtracted)
Exclusion
Hue
Saturation
Colour
Luminosity (colour is discarded)

2 comments:

  1. Cool! And great photo- when was it taken?

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  2. This was on our trip to Disneyland in 2001. Here we were waiting for the shuttle bus to take us. The first thing we did was go the the hat shop and buy hats for all of us because the sun was just beating down. My hat has stylized Mickey logo in swirls.

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