Layer magic
North Star: Spring Remix
Here's a fun spring makeover - I like the cheerful colors, not at all like the cold autumn day I made the original. How I did it follows:
Team-PS Archives
Fill and opacity
Photoshop screenshot, 100% opacity, 100% fill
In my discussion on the color burn/dodge and linear burn/dodge blending modes, I showed how those modes exhibited different behavior based on whether the regular opacity or fill opacity was reduced. That oddity, however, is not the primary purpose of the fill opacity slider. Why have two opacity sliders in the first place?
More PS blending modes: Color Burn/Dodge and Linear Burn/Dodge
Reed Thomas's Quarter Horses, Mount Pleasant, Utah
In previous posts, I discussed the use of Photoshop's some blending modes for image adjustments: darken/lighten and multiply/screen. Today I am comparing four more blending modes: Color Burn vs Linear Burn and Color Dodge vs Linear Dodge (Add).
Continue reading "More PS blending modes: Color Burn/Dodge and Linear Burn/Dodge" »
Understanding Darken and Lighten in Photoshop
Sky adjusted in original image using the darken blending mode to apply a second version of the same image, opened in Adobe Camera Raw with a negative exposure value. Masks and blending sliders to limit blend to sky.
I think a lot about color, maybe because I was severely near-sighted as a child, and pools of inditinct color dominated my visual world until I got glasses. I like to play with color contrasts in my choice of subjects and in post-processing effects. A basic understanding of how Photosop works with colors is the first step toward predictable (and desirable) results, even with seemingly the unrelated blending modes darken and lighten.
Drawing from our grade school color mixing experiments, it would stand to reason that lighten means "add white" and darken means "add black." So how might Photoshop do that? It's not so simple as it sounds.
Continue reading "Understanding Darken and Lighten in Photoshop" »
Multiply and Screen to adjust exposure in Photoshop
Defunct neon, Van Buren Drive, Phoenix Arizona
In my Photoshop workshop on Saturday for the Photowalking Utah group, I explained how to use the multiply and screen blending modes to adjust brightness in an image, but I didn't have time to go into details about the underlying principles. Here's the bigger picture story.
Continue reading "Multiply and Screen to adjust exposure in Photoshop" »
