Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [212]
Linear Light
Applies a Linear Dodge or Linear Burn blending mode, depending on the base color. Linear Light produces a slightly stronger effect than the Vivid Light mode. Blending with 50% gray has no effect.
Pin Light
Applies a Lighten blend mode to the lighter colors and a Darken blend mode to the darker colors. Pin Light produces a stronger effect than Soft Light mode. Blending with 50% gray has no effect.
Hard Mix
Produces a posterized image consisting of up to eight colors: red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, black and white. The blend color is a product of the base color and the luminosity of the blend layer.
Difference
Subtracts either the base color from the blending color or the blending color from the base, depending on whichever has the highest brightness value. In visual terms, a 100% white blend value inverts (i.e. turns to a negative) the base layer completely, a black value will have no effect and values in between will partially invert the base layer. Duplicating a Background layer and applying Difference at 100% produces a black image. Dramatic changes can be gained by experimenting with different opacities. Difference is often used to detect minor differences between two near-identical layers in exact register, such as a comparison of images in different color spaces or saved using different JPEG compression.
Exclusion
A slightly muted variant of the Difference blending mode. Blending with pure white inverts the base image.
Divide
This example doesn't really show you anything useful, but the Divide blend mode does have useful applications such as when carrying out a fl at field calibration (see pages 436–437).
Hue
Preserves the luminance and saturation of the base image, replacing with the hue of the blending pixels.
Saturation
Preserves the luminance and hue of the base image, replacing with the saturation of the blending pixels.
Color
Preserves the luminance values of the base image, replacing the hue and saturation values of the blending pixels. Color mode is particularly suited for hand-coloring photographs.
Luminosity
Preserves the hue and saturation of the base image while applying the luminance of the blending pixels.
Experimenting with the blend modes
To put all this into practice, try opening the image shown below from the DVD and follow the steps outlined here. In particular, observe how the ‘Blend Interior Effects as Group’ option works on Layer C, which is using the Difference blending mode. When you check the ‘Blend Interior Effects as Group’ option, the result will be the same as if you had first ‘fixed’ the interior layer style using the Normal blend mode and then changed the blend mode to Difference. Other aspects of the Layer Style blending options dialog box are covered in the Layers Styles section in the Photoshop CS5 for Photographers Help Guide DVD.
Advanced Blending options
Layer groups allow you to group a number of layers together such that the layers contained within a layer group behave like a single layer. In Pass Through blending mode the layer blending passes through the layer group and the interaction is no different than if the individual layers were in a normal layer stack. However, when you select any of the other blending mode options for a layer group, the blending results are equivalent to what would happen if you chose to merge all the layers in the current group into a single layer and then adjusted the blending mode for the merged layer.
Knockout options
Among the Advance Blending modes, the Knockout blending options (see Step 2 on page 495) allow you to force a layer to punch through some or all of the layers beneath it. A ‘Shallow’ knockout punches through to the bottom of the layer group only, while a ‘Deep’ knockout punches through to just above the Background layer.
Blend Interior effects
Layer styles are normally applied independent of the layer blending