Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual

Layer Blend Modes

Perched near the upper-left corner of the Layers panel is an unlabeled menu of blend modes, which control how pixels on different layers interact with one another. (Unless you change it, this menu is set to Normal.) For example, when layers overlap, the top one can either block the bottom one completely, or the layers can blend together in some way (these effects, and many more, are shown in Figure 8-7). You control exactly how they blend together by using blend modes.

Tip

To truly understand these modes, try duplicating an Image layer and then using your keyboard to cycle through ’em all. Press Shift-plus to go forward through the blend mode menu or Shift-minus to go backward.

This section covers how to use layer blend modes, but you can find other blend-mode menus all over the place in Photoshop:

• In the Layer Style dialog box, where you can add effects like drop shadows, glows, and so on (Layer Styles).

• In some filters’ dialog boxes and in most filters’ Blending Options dialog box, which you get by using Smart Filters (see Chapter 16).

• In the Fade dialog box, which you can access via Edit→Fade right after you run a filter (see the box on Fading Filters) or apply any of the adjustments in the Image→Adjustments menu.

  

  Figure 8-7. Here’s what Photoshop’s blend modes do when you use them to affect how the colors on these two layers blend together. (The water image is on top ...