Still playing with blend modes in Photoshop

I seem to have started something for myself with the book I mentioned in a post back in March. When I take a digital photo now, the first thing I do before I use it, is to just see if a better image can be "developed" by using blend modes rather than simply individual tools like brightness and contrast and opacity levels.

The book I found in a charity shop, inspired me to start playing around with the blend modes but it is rather like a cookery book. The author himself actually calls the examples recipes, and gives settings to explain the results on the photos which he shows. Great for showing what you can do - not so great for explaining what you do to achieve a required effect. I started looking around on the internet using Google and lo and behold, as you might expect, there are lots of great tutorials. Some are just a little too technical with lots of maths, but bookmarking one or two is well worth while for reference. I would recommend

Photoshop blend modes explained to understand how  they work  

Photoshop’s Five Essential Blend Modes For Photo Editing, a brilliant article explaining how to use the blend modes to achieve a desired effect

Photoshop, using blend modes  - a little more complicated usage but well explained.


I am sure that a quick search will bring up many more, of which, you may find your own favourites. There is a mixture of ( fairly complicated maths), what they are, what they do and how to use them in all of the articles and your own requirements will colour your choice. But for now, take a look at how I improved this simple macro-photograph of an amaryllis flower.

Quite a decent shot but I prefer a little more contast in my images, a personal choice. So I looked at the blend modes which serve to increase the contast. After switching through those half dozen modes, I decided to go with "OVERLAY" which gave me the results as follows:

I thought this bought out the scarlet of the petals whilst darkening the centre of the trumpet. If I was looking for a botanical image then the first is going to be best because more detail is seen in the shaded centre of the bloom. But this was to be purely for effect, so I went for it.

I also edited the shot to reduce the information in the background here. I selected the flower using the magic wand tool, setting a high tolerance and adding small areas by shift +clicking until the whole area was selected. I then inverted the selection and used image/adjustments/hue&saturation to give the effect which I was after.

But the flower then seemed to be floating rather then existing in the scene, a last touch was to copy the stem and paste into this image.

A small touch but it worked for me.

Have You Discovered The Usefulness of Blend Modes On Photoshop?

I guess most old hands on Photoshop will know all about Blend Modes. But I have used it for a couple of years and never really touched these useful  tools. I would not class myself as an expert but I thought I could do most things I needed with other tools.

Today however I finally found a book which explains what they do and how to use them. I have been playing with these for a while since returning home and thought I would post a few of the results. I have yet to really get to know them but at least I have an idea of what they will do - or at least some of them. I will be working on getting a better understanding and maybe pass some of my learning on in this blog.

So lets take a simple photograph of Kennilworth Castle, it leaves a lot to be desired; quite flat and little contrast / colour even though the day was reasonably sunny.

Now after copying the background to provide a second layer (drag background to the new layer icon) select the blend mode for the new layer and choose overlay.

The result is a much more lively image.

Now this could be have been achieved by using the IMAGE/ADJUST/ ... menu and going through the brightness/contrast and maybe compensating for colour; but it will take much longer.

Now without giving any details, here are a few effects (I will give the blend mode of the copied layer. All were done in a similar manner. Again, there are many ways of achieving the same thing in PS; use whichever works for you but I know I have found these to be very useful.

Here I used vivid light mode, the shadows are rather deep but good for effect.

Exlusion mode was used here, although other edits were made to the image as well.

This was a combination of effects, so I am not going to name just one of them.


I have enjoyed playing with these effects, and as I said may post some other results of my plaaying around with them. Definitely adds another string to the photographers bow.

Oh, for the record, the book I am referring to is PHOTOSHOP Blending Modes Cookery Book by John Beardsworth published by ILEX Digital Studio. I have no affiliate connections with the author or publisher.