I use blending modes a lot. Actually, I should preface that… I use two or three blending modes a lot. Some of the others? Not so much. A few of them, when I apply them, I think “EW! Turn it off! Turn it off!” What the heck would you use that for? I mean, they must have a purpose. The Photoshop developers wouldn’t put worthless functionality in the program. They created it for SOMETHING. Right?
So I have set a personal goal of mastering each blending mode and learning how to apply them in a composite. I’m kind of excited at the prospect of opening up a new side of PS I’ve never explored.
But first, for those of you who are new to blending modes I wanted to give you guys a quick overview of what they do. This is not an in-depth tutorial on blending modes. If you want that I can recommend a bunch of in-depth videos. No, my goal today is to demystify them. I didn’t use blending modes for a really long time. Why? Because the tutorials were hard to understand. They all used terms like luma, chroma and linear interpolation. Then one day while watching a tutorial a light-blub came on and I thought “Well for Pete’s sake! Why didn’t they just say that to begin with?” So here is my epiphany. I think you will find my way of thinking about blending modes much easier to understand…
When you click on the blending modes drop down you will notice the different blending modes are grouped… 
This grouping tells you those blending modes do something similar to each other.
This first set is used to take out white (or light colored) pixels and leaves the darker ones…
Here’s how this is useful. In my image “She took the city by storm” I needed to create shadows behind my model so it would look as if she was really standing there. But as you know, when you cut things out, you cut out the shadows. This is where “taking out the white and leaving the black” blending modes come in handy.
I went to my stock images and found one with the shadows I needed…
I turned it black and white (and blurred it a bit in order to take out some of the texture).
I then turned the blending mode to multiply and see what happens? It took out the white pixels and left the black ones…
I now have the darker shadows I needed. ah! This opens up a whole new world doesn’t it? Now anything you put on a white background you can blend in using any of the blending modes that remove white pixels! So if you see a cool texture you want to use but you need to take out the white pixels and leave the darker one’s, then start punching around on this set. You’ll probably find what you need here…
The next set of blending modes do the opposite of the set above. This set takes out black (or dark colored pixels) and leaves the white ones…
Here is how this one works… In my image “The Spirit of Halloween” I wanted to create an effect that looked like the edges of her robe where electrified and sparking…
I ran across some images that had the look I wanted to apply. These wonderful stock images are provided by Pauline Moss and can be found under her DeviantArt account here…
I knew these images would work because I already knew there was a set of blending modes in Photoshop that would take out the black pixels and leave the white ones… Here’s how I did it.
I cut and pasted the stock images into my artwork and placed them over my model…
I then dropped the opacity a bit so I could see to line up the flares with the edge of the robe…
Then, when you turn the blending mode to screen (or one of the other from the “takes out black” group) it takes out the black background and leaves the white
flare part… NICE right!?
Then I masked it off the areas I didn’t want and you get this…
I added more sparkle by doing the same thing with the other image… I placed it where I wanted it…
Turned the blending mode to screen to take out the black…
Then masked it off the parts of the image I didn’t want and you are left with this!
So now, if you ever have a project where you want to take out the black pixels and leave the light ones, you know there is a set that can accomplish that task! Isn’t this fun? It’s like getting a 1000 new paint brushes all dumped in your lap! LOL!
Bonus Side Note: If you have an image that, when you apply the blending mode, it is not taking enough white or enough black pixels out of it you can use this little tool right here… This is a levels adjustment layer. You apply this to your layer you are blending in and by sliding those little triangles around you can control how much of the black or how much of the white is taken out…
The next set of blending modes are actually applying mixtures of the first two. Think of it this way. If Darken and Lighten got married and had a baby, they would name it Overlay. LOL!
This is probably the set I use the most. My favorite two are soft light and overlay. When you use these modes it gives you a really nice blended result and can go a long way in matching different components in color and tone. A lot of times I don’t have to tweak the color once I apply the mixing blending modes because it shifts the color and tone based on the color values in the image itself. Here is an example from my artwork “The Princess and the Dragon”. I found this beautiful, stormy sky stock image. I loved the grainy, painterly clouds it had. This stock image is by salsolastock on DeviantArt.com and can be found here…
I brought the image into my project and placed it where I wanted it…
Then turned the blending mode to soft light and masked it off the areas I didn’t want it to show!
A lot of times when you use these blending modes you will not know which one will work. Each one has a little bit different effect so I just suggest scrolling through them till you find one that you can tweak and work with.
This next is what I refer to as the “arithmetic set”. These are the blending modes your math tutor gets giddy over. These are all based on numbers. When you were in school, do you remember those math assignments you did where your teacher would have you work the math problems and then plot the answer on a graph and when you got finished connecting all the dots it formed a happy face? Yeah… that’s what this is. Only instead of making pictures this creates colors. Trippy-dippy colors. I’ll be honest with you I don’t know much about them other than that. I’ve never used them. BUT I’m on a mission to put these to use. If I find out any cool uses for them I will be sure to pass them on. 🙂 
This last set I think of as the color mixing set.
Do you remember those days in elementary school when you discovered mixing red paint with blue paint magically created purple? That’s exactly what the hue blending mode does. It takes one layer’s colors and mixes it with the other layer’s colors and the resulting colors are the new shade. That’s why, when applying this blending mode you get some crazy hues. But the power of this mode comes when you are wanting to color correct an image. Using this blending mode is like applying a color wash in painting. A lot of retouch artists use this for taking really red skin and toning it down. What is the opposite of red on the color wheel? Green. So basically if you want to take redness out of someone’s skin, you create a layer above the model, turn the blending mode to Hue and paint with green. This will counter act the red and create more balance with a lot less steps than using curves etc… Here is an example
The sand and surf in this image has a pink cast to it. You can correct that using the technique I just talk about.
All you do to take out the redness is paint with green on a layer set to the Hue blending mode and tada! No more pink!
This will work with any color you want to correct. All you have to do is find your color on the color wheel and what ever color is opposite of it, will take it out.
Moving forward, think of this blending mode set as a box of crayons. It’s fun to create one of these layers and start coloring all the objects in your image different colors. It works great because it’s a transparent wash. So it doesn’t get rid of the shadows and highlights. It just shifts the color. It’s like color books for grown ups!
There are many, many, many other ways to utilize the blending mode groups I just told you about and in the coming weeks I’ll be working on finding more specific techniques to show you guys. I hope this helps clear the cobwebs and gives you a great overview of what these amazing tools can do.
Keep learning and keep #SharingItForward!
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Lady Caroline
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This is an excellent article, you really shed some light, I use the blending modes a lot!
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