Thursday
Jul212011
Eyedropper + Layer Blending Modes
Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 9:31AM
Note: Reader Tom H brings up a great point: the videos this week are going under the assumption that you have the "sample all layers" mode activated on your eyedropper tool. You will get different results if you use the "sample current layer" mode. Thanks for the reminder, Tom!
Reader Comments (16)
Not really an interesting, different way to use color, but here' something I've just discovered on my own with the overlay layer after a lot of trial and error:
Say that I'm doing an initial wash of color over a greyscale painting, and I want to creep up on the color using the overlay layers. I dunno how I have not figured this out sooner, but when your picking out colors, keep the brightness to 50% - only adjust the saturation and hue values. Keeping the brightness slider at 50% does not alter your values, so you're able to lay in color without your oh-so-carefully thought out values being screwed up. If you DO want to darken or lighten a portion of your picture, then you know how to do so carefully and with thought, instead of randomly dragging the slider around like a drunkard.
This is probably something a lot of people know already, but I figured it could help out a beginner or two. My approach to painting otherwise more or less follows how I used to play with cars when I younger: smash stuff together haphazardly until something cool happens.
excellent
I know you said your knowledge was limited, but all the same--if you can--I'd love a video that was a step more basic than this, and just went over the basic definition of different blending modes, what they actually do, and some basic uses of them. This video sort of gave me an accidentally-skipped-a-chapter feeling, not because of anything in Matt's teaching but just because I don't really know much about blending layers to begin with. I'm not even clear on the functional difference between using a blending mode and just adjusting the layer opacity.
Hey Cyndi,
That's a totally understandable question. I'd recommend "Grayscale to color" in the store. It talks a lot about how Photoshop handles color, and how to use some of the more common blending modes. It doesn't address every single one, but honestly - most of them aren't necessary for painting. I know this might not be the answer you're looking for, but I can't give all the good stuff away for free ;)
Aha! I will save my pennies etc. and get right on that--thanks Matt!
@ Cyndi
The blending modes in Photoshop are kind of confusing, and there is a good chance that for most people (myself included) simply playing around with them will be more beneficial than learning the physics behind each of them. I found this particular post to be very helpful regarding how each blending mode works, even if it gets a little technical.
http://nedroidcomics.livejournal.com/227177.html?thread=6038377#t6038377
The tutorial itself is fairly informative (not to mention hilarious) but the comments section gets into the meat and potatoes of the most commonly used blending modes.
Hope you find it as helpful as I did.
Hey, I'm wondering, since we're on the topic of blending modes and layer styles if you could shed any light on flattening down the stack because I've noticed that at times with either a hard light, color dodge or overlay layer when I merge it down to a normal layer the effect doesn't translate and sometimes bleeds over the art underneath (where as in either of the modes before it hadn't).
The only approach I've come up with is the make a new layer and paste visible (alt+ctrl+shift+e) into that new layer. But unfortunately I've become used to keeping transparent information in my layers and this process annoys me because it pastes all the white of the background. Are there any ideas as to why photoshop does this and any other work arounds that people have come up with? It would be interesting to know if anyone has, to avoid all the time spent masking afterwards.
@Joel
If you want to flatten down the blending modes (Overlay for example) you have to know a bit about how it works. I guess you do know that the overlay mode uses the colors on the layer to modify the colors that are on the layers below it. So this means that the effect of the blending mode is only visible as long as it has its own layer. Try the following: Create a black, empty image. Then paint a white stroke on a new layer set to the "Overlay" blending mode. What happens is, that the stroke becomes invisible because it now is applied through a blending mode. Now add a second layer in between (mode: Normal) and do a few red strokes. You will notice that they get lighter wherever they meet with the white stroke you made before. This all looks great, but if you now merge the two top layers together a part of your white stroke is revealed again. (I hope this reproduces the "effect" you ran into.
Check the layer palette an notice that the new, merged layer now is set to normal. Therefore the rest of the white paint (now on a normal layer), shows up again as pure white! As far as I know there is no direct way to get around this. But did you know that you can set your brush to a blending mode?? Select the brush tool and then check the top of your user interface. There's a field called "Mode:", it should allow you to set a blending mode for your brush.
If you still want to merge the layers together you have to merge them so that all of the white paint (example above) is over a solid color on a layer set to "Normal".
I hope this clears things up a bit, even if it does not really solve your problem!
DRAWINGCODE
@ Joel:
There's only one workaround that I know of:
The problem you're running into is because layer blend modes besides "normal" need to have some sort of information under it for it to work properly. If there's no paint information underneath the blend mode, then you'll notice that something can change in the effect.
You can try this out - make 4 layers - one that's the main background layer, one that's a normal, one that's a multiply and one that's a color dodge. Fill the normal with a random color and then paint a circle on it. On the normal layer just paint a circle shape. Finally, on the last two layers draw a line that cross over the two shapes. You'll notice that if you try to merge the two layer modes together everything gets switched to normal. You'll also notice that if you merge the blend layers down to the normal layer the effects stay on the circle painted on the normal, but not on the circle painted on the background. Merging it all down at once keeps everything. This is just how photoshop works.
This is also why you can't merge two different blend modes together - you can only merge a blend mode into the same blend mode, or into a normal. So you can merge those 30 layers of multiply down into one and retain the effects, but if you try to merge an overlay layer down onto that, then everything gets switched to normal and you lose the blend modes.
The way I've done stuff now if I want to merge blend modes together (but don't want to commit it to the final paint) is that I'll just duplicate everything (including the background,) then merge. If I find that everything is fine from there on out, I eventually flatten it.
Now if you NEED to keep everything separate you can't really do that - and that's why I've grown very cozy with layer groups.
how i use layermodes.
softlight: lighten areas without loosing to much detail i already made. I also use it for textures, it's more descent then overlay layer in my opionion.
colorburn: i use it for glossiness, if you fill a layer and set it on colorburn highlights will stay the rest gets darker, but do it on low opacity.
mutliply: very handy for drop shadows and shadows in generell
color: simply to color my greyscales
colododge: i use it for bloom effect and glow
Lakai: Very useful! Thanks!
@ Joel:
Only actual way to retain the effect on any layer mode when merging without destroying your layers, is ctrl+shift+alt+E what it does it makes a copy of your layers merged on top of the Layers, then you can easily copy the selection from the effect you wish to keep. then mask it out of the merged layer you just made, is what i do whenever i work with layer blending, and it works out the quickest for me.
Thanks Lakai, for that explanation! I haven't really experimented with layer mode painting yet besides normal, so this is very helpful.:)
@kikoshi, drew, drawincode
Thanks for your thoughts. Yep, I think you guys know what I'm talking about. I've searched all over painting and photography forums to see if there was some kind of work around, but with no such luck.
My primary technique is to drop all my layers into a group, duplicate it, and turn off the one I want to save, then merge the group. This way I don't flatten to the background and keep most of the transparent data... or alpha channel, whatever you wanna call it.
I totally forgot about the brush modes! Thats a good idea! It can work much the same as layer painting if you know how to use your history eraser well!
I guess there really is no easy way to avoid masking in the end.
@Joel
The great Feng Zhu (www.youtube.com/fzdschool) once mentioned in one of his videos that he saves the complete file to a filename like darknight_v1.psd. Then he opens it up again and saves it in darknight_v2.psd. He then can merge all the layers together because the layers stay in the v1-file. Don't know if that really fits your workflow, just a thought!!
DrawingCode
I think this is the beautiful topic of this site!