My most recent article on the Improve Photography website is about using blend modes in Photoshop to make your photo editing easier. This one is for the photographers out there, the rest of you are excused, there are no funny stories or beautiful travel pics here!
Using layer blend modes to create a double exposure effect in Photoshop.
Chances are, you think that Photoshop blend modes are for blending images to create double exposure effects or to add a texture to your photos. After all, that is what the name seems to imply. Perhaps you've never noticed the blend modes tab and have no idea what I'm even talking about, in which case I am about to blow your mind and change how you work in Photoshop forever. Make no mistake, blend modes are an extremely powerful tool that can save you loads of time, open worlds of creative possibility and improve your photo editing by leaps and bounds.
Blend modes use algorithms and math to do a bunch of technical stuff that is of zero interest to me, so if you are looking for THAT kind of article, then you are about to be disappointed. What does interest me about blend modes is the ever-increasing number of ways that I have learned to use them in order to accomplish my creative vision more easily. Now that I have an understanding of what the modes do, I am constantly dreaming up new ways to use them to ease my editing tasks.
Using the Lighten Blend mode in Photoshop to mask around white fur
Using the colour blend mode in Photoshop to change the colour of a bird
Using the darken layer mode in Photoshop to clean up halos around edges in a landscape image.
Using blend modes in Ps to create a glowing light effect
Using layer blend modes in PS to do a sky replacement
