I love Blend Modes. I can't get enough of them when I create digital scrapbooking layouts. I'm hoping you'll feel the same way once you see what they can do.

Blend Modes can be used as a creative option or as a correction tool. I'm only going to go over the beginning, creative, aspects here.

Blend Modes combine your layers in interesting, sometimes great, sometimes not, ways. You must have more than one layer to use Blend Modes because they blend the pixels in one layer with the pixels in another.

How they blend the layers is different with each mode. For instance, one mode might take the color from the top layer and blend it with the pattern from the bottom layer. Another might take the light pixels from the top layer and blend them with the dark pixels from the bottom layer. I'm not going to describe how each and every Blend Mode works because it would take forever and it's already written out for you in both your owner's manual and in your program's Help file. And besides, for creative purposes, it doesn't matter what's actually happening, only how it looks to you.

Let's Play!

Blend Modes are found in the Layers Palette. Look for the word "Normal" with a drop down arrow next to it.

In PSP, it looks like this:

In PSE:

In PS:

You can access the Blend Modes by clicking the down arrow next to the word Normal, or by simply clicking on the word Normal. A list will pop up with all the various types of Blend Modes.

Quick Example of a Few Blend Modes

Here's a basic image I created with two very different layers for this tutorial. It's got a solid purple layer and a layer of a green leaf pattern over white.

Because my leaf print layer is above the purple layer, you can't see the purple when I look at the image. Now let's blend these two layers and see what happens.

The layer on top is always blended with the layer beneath it, so there's no point in ever changing the Blend Mode of your bottom layer. So I decided to change the Blend Mode of the leaf pattern layer as it's above the purple one.

By clicking on the word "Normal" or on the drop down arrow next to the word "Normal," I can see all the Blend Modes. I'm not going to show you what happened in each and every Blend Mode because I'm sure you will get the idea real quickly, but here are some examples.

With "Lighten," I get the light areas (white) from the top layer and the dark areas (originally green) are now the purple from the bottom layer.

 

With "Burn," I get this:

 

In "Overlay" Mode, this is what happened...

 

In each of these examples, the two layers are blended together to create a totally different look. But neither of the original layers is actually affected... look at the thumbnails in the Layers Palette... my purple layer is still purple and my green and white layer is still green and white.

Blend Mode Color Changing

So you're probably saying, "Interesting, but what do you do with it?" Glad you asked.

 

Say you have a paper in purple. This one is from Really Different Florals. Perfect pattern for what you're working on, but the photo you're trying to scrap has a lot of green in it and it just wouldn't work with this purple. Too bad this paper didn't have some green in it.

Try this. Add a new layer and fill it with the shade of green you'd like. Switch the blend mode to Hue. Hue takes the hue of the top layer and combines it with the pattern in the bottom layer.

Viola, the paper appears green! But look at the Layers Palette. The paper has not actually been changed. The paper layer is still intact, in its original colors, no harm done to it.

Blend Mode Collage

Ever seen those professional portraits where someone's head/face is shown in multiple positions on a black background? Or one image is sharp and there's a faded one in the background? Or those collaged images with multiple images blending incredibly into one another? Here's how they do it.

I took an image of a purple flower. I layered another image of some tulips on a black background and place it as a layer over the purple rose. I changed the Blend Mode to "Screen." This is what I got...

Once again, you can see from my layer thumbnails that neither image has really been changed, they are just being blended together.

Are you asking, "How did you know to put the tulips in Screen Mode?" Well, here's my answer... I didn't.

When you click to bring up the list of Blend Modes, all you really need to do is click the first one. Then use the scroll wheel on your mouse and scroll down through the list of Blend Modes and watch what happens. Sometimes you get incredibly gorgeous things, other modes will give you a mess. A Blend Mode that works great on one set of layers will look terrible on another. You just have to play.

There are a few Blend Modes whose actions are so specific, you'll quickly learn what they do, like "Color" and "Hue" for changing the color of lower layers (and some for image correction which I won't cover here). But for the most part, it's creative play. So play!

Tweaking

There are times when you're scrolling through the Blend Modes and you get almost exactly what you want, but not 100%. This is when you tweak. Tweaking can be anything that makes your image better like moving a layer or changing the Opacity of a layer.

For instance, in the above example, I originally had both layers the exact same size directly over each other. But when I was scrolling through the Blend Modes and hit "Screen," I loved what it did and stopped. Only problem was that the tulips were directly over the rose. So as you can see in my layer thumbnails, I simply moved the tulip layer down and over to the right to give me a better image.

Sometimes you find the right Blend Mode, but it's too much of one layer showing and not enough of another, or the effect is too harsh, or too bright, etc. Simply change the opacity of that layer or of the layer underneath it to get the results you want.

I hope this gets you started with Blend Modes. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me here at Scrap Girls.

Tutorial written by Lori A. Cook