Welcome back to another very exciting tutorial here at the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com.
My name is Jesus Ramirez and you can find me on Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this video, I'm going to show you how Photoshop's 8 special Blending Modes work.
These special blending modes are a bit different than the rest and what I'm going to do in
this video is show you what the differences are and how you can take advantage of them.
If you want to know more about Blending Modes and how they all work, then don't forget to
watch my tutorial on blending modes.
I go through each individual blend mode and explain how it works.
By the way, if you're new to the Photoshop Training Channel, don't forget to click on
that Subscribe button for more free tutorials.
Okay, let's get started.
So we're going to talk about the 8 Special Blend Modes, and these are the 8 here, the
ones highlighted in yellow.
This is just simply a screenshot of the drop down of all the blend modes and the blend
modes highlighted in yellow react differently when you adjust the Fill and Opacity and,
also, when you uncheck a special box in the Layer Style Panel.
And we're going to go through that in a moment.
I just want to make sure that you understand that this video only applies to Color Burn,
Linear Burn, Color Dodge, Linear Dodge (Add), Vivid Light, Linear Light, Hard Mix, and Difference.
So in this group, I have this graphic.
I'm going to disable it now and we're going to be working with this image here.
The image is really not that important.
I just needed an image to show you how the different blend modes work, so you can follow
along with any image.
So I'm going to create a new layer right above that layer of the young man.
And I'm going to fill that with 50% gray, so I'm going to hold Shift and Backspace,
and that's going to bring up the Fill Window.
You can also go into Edit and Fill if you don't want to use the keyboard shortcut.
And under Content, select 50% gray and press OK.
This is going to fill the layer with 50% gray and we can change the Blend Mode to Hard Mix.
Now you probably have seen this blend mode before, but you probably never found it very
useful.
If I bring down the Opacity, you'll see that it still doesn't look very good and there's
not a lot of uses for it, but if we adjust the fill, notice the difference.
And if we leave the Fill roughly at 20%, you'll see that now we can use it for something.
We can use it to add contrast and to saturate the image a little bit.
So that's before and that's after.
So, a lot of these 8 blend modes, you might not have seen a use for them because you probably
have only been using the Opacity slider, not the Fill.
So with these 8 blend modes, those two react differently.
Also, if you're painting directly on a layer, I'm going to click on the Brush Tool, and
I'm going to change the Blend Mode to Linear Dodge (Add), you'll get this result when you
paint with white.
But if I create a new layer and paint with white, you don't get that result.
Notice the difference?
You know this brush stroke on top seems hotter and brighter on the edges and this one does
not, even though we're in the same blend mode.
And if we switch the blend mode on the layer to the Linear Dodge (Add) blending mode, it
still doesn't change, and that is because you need an extra step.
So if you double click on the side of the layer and uncheck Transparency Shapes Layer,
notice what happens to this brush stroke here.
It now seems hot and bright like the one above it.
So, if you paint with one of these 8 blend modes directly on a layer, you're going to
get different results than if you paint on a separate layer.
And if you want that separate layer to have the same results as painting directly on the
layer, you need to double click on the side of the layer and uncheck Transparency Shapes
Layer, so I'm just going to cancel that and I'm actually going to Undo to remove that
brush stroke from the actual layer.
So what I recommend you do is go through those 8 blend modes and paint with either white,
50% gray, or black, and see how the image reacts by adjusting the Fill and Opacity and,
also, uncheck that box just so you can get different results.
And one of the things that you can do using these techniques is something you have probably
see me do before if you follow my tutorials.
So you can create some flairs or highlights or lights, specular highlights and things
like that, so what I'm going to do in this tutorial is show you how to turn this piece
of white that you see back here--I'm not really sure what that is, it looks like it's just
a board--how to turn that into a light.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a new layer, so I'm going to tap on the center
of the image just with a small soft brush.
Make sure that white is your foreground color, and there it is.
I'm going to press Ctrl T, Command T, to transform and scale that up by holding Shift Alt, Shift
Option on the Mac, and bring that up right about there.
I'm going to press V on the keyboard to select the Move Tool, click and drag so we can move
this around, then I'm going to double click on the side of the layer here and go into
the Blending Mode and choose Linear Dodge (Add) and uncheck Transparency Shapes Layer
to get that different blend and press OK, so now this looks like a highlight.
I can put that right over here and notice how this is looking like a bright light, which
is what I want.
I can bring down the Fill, so that looks like the light is not as bright.
And, actually, I'm going to bring the Fill back up and I'm going to bring down the Opacity
just so you can see the difference.
See how, if I bring the Opacity down, it looks flat.
I'm at 58% now.
I'm going to go down further to 38%, so notice the difference if I bring down the Fill, and
I'm going to 38% as well.
There you go—37%.
It doesn't look as flat as it did before, but anyway, so we'll leave that at 100% for
now, and then, we'll reduce it if we need to.
What I'm going to do now is add some color to this light, so I'm going to create a new
Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer, click on Colorize, and then, we're going to clip
this to the layer below it so that it only affects the highlight.
So you can press Ctrl Alt G, Command Option G on the Mac, to turn that into a clipping
mask.
Notice this down pointing arrow here right next to the adjustment layer.
You could also click on this icon here in the Properties panel to do the same thing.
And what I'm going to do now is make sure that I have Colorize checked, then I'm going
to click and drag the Lightness slider to the left so we can get some of that color
going in there.
Notice how this is looking red now.
I can adjust the Hue slider, move that to the right, maybe get it to the blues and we
have a blue light, and that's what I want.
I'm going to, now, click on this layer here, which is the light and I'll just rename it
and call it "light," and just bring down the Fill accordingly.
So, now, this looks like light; so that's before and after.
And, of course, I will need to do other things to the image to make this light a little more
realistic, but in this tutorial I just wanted to focus on the technique of creating the
light.
So, once again, these are the 8 blend modes that react differently with Fill and Opacity,
and the 8 blend modes that will blend differently if you uncheck Transparency Shapes Layer.
And that's it for this tutorial.
I hope that you enjoyed it and that you learned something new.
Make sure that you leave all your comments or questions down below.
If you create an image using this tutorial or any other of my tutorials, feel free to
share it on Instagram with the hashtag #ptcvids.
I often do a search for this hashtag to see what you're all up to.
If I find your image, I would leave you a comment.
Also, don't forget to subscribe and click on that Like button.
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Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you again soon.