How to Use Layers in Photoshop Elements 2019 – Part 5 – Blending Modes

Watch Photoshop Elements 2019 video tutorial below, we will take a look at the use of blending modes. We will show you the effects of blending to an image and demonstrate some examples of the blending modes.

Welcome back to our course on PSE 2019. In this section, we’re going to look at Blending Modes.

I’ll start by explaining what we mean by blending. We’ll look at blending modes in PSE. I’ll explain the terms base color and blend color. We’ll look at the relationship between blending mode and opacity. And, I’ll demonstrate one of the tools that have blending mode options.

I’ve cut out one of the iris flowers from one of my photos. It’s presented here on a transparent background. Note, the original background layer is invisible. I’ve explained several times during the course already is that if a layer is 100% opaque, which the background copy layer is. Let me just select it.

You can’t see through it, but it is possible for the color of something in an opaque layer to interact with the colors of what’s behind it. The interaction between a color in one layer and color in a layer behind it is called blending.

What I’m going to do is to put a solid fill layer behind this iris first. I’m going to select the background layer. I’m going to make my foreground color white. I’ll be going to insert a fill layer, defaults to white. There we are! I now have my iris flower in front of what is in effect a white background.

The iris flower, the background copy layer, is 100% opaque. To the left of the opacity slider, there is a dropdown and this dropdown sets the blending mode for the layer. It’s currently set to normal which it’s always been set at so far on the course. Let’s try one or two of the others.

Let’s try to Dissolve. No visible effect. Let’s try Color Burn. It’s completely gone. Let’s try Multiply. Now, with a white background, some of the blending modes have an effect but the effect is usually either to make the object in front disappear altogether or to have no effect whatsoever.

So, what I’m going to do now is to change the color of that background fill layer. Make sure it’s selected. And that I have the layer itself selected rather than the mask. Double click. I’m going to change the color. I’m going to go for this red color.

Now, it might be quite difficult to tell at the moment. With the normal blending mode, the flower looks just the same as it did before when I had the white behind it. Watch what happens now if I change the blending mode say to Color Burn.

What I get now is quite a dramatic effect and in fact, if I work my through a few of these blending modes, what about Color Dodge? I get some very varied. In some cases as, I say pretty dramatic effects. So, that’s what blending mode can do.

Now, you’ve already seen that there are many different blending modes. There are a lot of entries on that menu. If you consider all of the possible color combinations that you could achieve you can certainly get a very, very wide variation in effect from blending modes.

Now, I’m certainly not going to work through those now because we could spend many, many hours on it. But I want to introduce you to a little bit of terminology because there is a good source of information on blending modes available.

The terminology I want to introduce you to is when you are blending colors. In this way, you’re normally dealing with two colors. You’re dealing with the color behind if you like.

In this case, that’s always red because it’s the color on that color fill layer, and that’s called the base color.

The color on the iris in this case, the one in front, is what we refer to as the blend color. When the base color and the blend color appear together and you have your blending mode selected, it produces the color that the viewer of your image sees. This is normally referred to as the result color.

And with that in mind, the place to go is the Adobe Help, because there is a very helpful section there on blending modes. It does something that I’m not going to do on this course. As part of that section on blending modes, it goes through each of the blending modes one at a time. And, it explains how each of the blending modes works and the result of each of those blending modes.

Obviously, that’s quite a long explanation. I would suggest, that if you are going to work through that, you take the opportunity to try it out with one or two different color backgrounds. Perhaps, one of your own images as well. But, that’s how blending modes work and that’s a good source of information on what each of the blending modes does.

There’s something else to bear in mind here. And that is, although opacity is a different thing altogether, opacity does affect blending mode. I still have the same image selected, the same color behind it. The blending mode I have selected is Color Dodge.

Let me vary the opacity of the layer with the iris on it. I’m just going to reduce the opacity. Look carefully at the image, as I reduce it. I’m quite substantially changing how much that Color Dodge blending mode is affecting the resulting image. Apart from the effect of the base color, the blend color, and the blending mode itself you can also vary the effect by changing opacity as well.

Finally, then let me just demonstrate one of the tools that has a blending mode option. The tool I’m going to use is the straightforward paintbrush. Let’s have a nice red color.

I’m going to draw a red line on that blue background. Note that my blending mode is normal. Now, let me change the blending mode to say Color Burn.

Let me change blending mode again. Let’s say, Vivid Light. So you can see how dramatic a difference that makes when you specify a blending mode other than normal, even with a straightforward tool like a brush.

That’s the end of this section. I’ll see you in the next one.

Adam Lacey

Adam Lacey is an Excel enthusiast and online learning expert. He combines these two passions at Simon Sez IT where he wears a number of different hats. When Adam isn't fretting about site traffic or Pivot Tables, you'll find him on the tennis court or in the kitchen cooking up a storm.