Here's another key concept that's important toe. Understand what it does cause is gonna have some potential benefits for us when we're doing things in photo shop. And I'm gonna just use this example to kind of explain how it works. And I covered this and almost every class I've ever taught here. I think because I think it's it's important to have this in your tool kit. I want to frame it the right way to say it's not a miracle worker, cause sometimes people see they're like, Oh, my God is gonna save my life all the time Not as much as you think, because it works in a very specific instance, but to at least know about it means you have the option of saying, Okay, I can try this very quickly. So all I have here is I have just a photograph, and I added a layer on top. To which I added thes Grady insist. So I'd have something to look at. And normally, of course, in photo shop. If we take something like the opacity command, it says, take the entire contents of the layer and make everything ...

on that see through, which is fine in some cases. But what if I said I would just like the lighter areas of these to be see through? I mean, I suppose I could add a layer, mask it manually paint on them, but I'm looking for a way is going toe automatically Say you do it for me. If you see light colored pixels, make them see through or dark color pictures, make them see through. And that's what this function does is called the blend. If sliders and the simplest way to get to them is just double click on the layer to bring up what looks a lot like the layer style dialog box. I'm gonna move these tooth these things over a bit so I can see more room for you here. So technically, I'm in the layer style dollar box where we had things like drop shadows and so on. But I haven't clicked on the one of those I'm on the this part here called the default options. You look right down here at the bottom. It says. Blend if onions, he says. This layer and underlying layer and the principle of this means make areas of a layer see through based on their brightness values. So, for example, if I take this white triangle and start to move it in a little bit, then you'll see all the brighter parts of these objects have suddenly become See through. I didn't make a selection first. I just said, Take whatever is bright and make that see through, and it's a sliding scale. So the further I move this, the mawr of those Grady INTs will disappear. If those were solid colors, at a certain point, the whole color would disappear. I deliberately used the greatest you could see. It's that specific that pixels are becoming more and more looking see through. If I go to the Black Triangle and this layer is going to say, take the darker parts of the layers and see how the yellow and orange one Nothing's happened very much because those colors are quite is dark. And that's where this starts to become a little tricky because it's so pixel specific that you might say, make that go away and it doesn't because it's not quite the right shade. But as you'll see in examples, if you just say I want to call the white pixels make them go away really quickly. This can be a really nice way to do it now. The Onley challenge of this. Let's zoom in little bit here, take a look at the edge of that. See how that this black has got this weird kind of picks. Allies edge. That's because that little triangle is so specific that it saying any colors or shades to the left of that make them see through the next one over make it opaque. So there's often you get a very kind of weird, jagged edge. And adobe solution of that, which is unusual, is if you look really closely, you can see there's a little white line in the middle of that triangle. That's Adobe telling you if you hold down the officer all key, you can actually split into two halfs, which most people don't necessarily get from like one little white line in the middle. But what that does is it means now I can create kind of a transitional zone where when I do this, I can faded out a lot more. So now this middle area here is kind of partially see through partially not so by moving these around I can create quite a different effect from this result Now. Part of what makes this interesting is when I click. OK, if you look at the layer, it's still all there. You can still see the black, so this blend, if is saying in a nondestructive way, make this part of the layer appear see through. It's not as obvious as a mass because we don't see anything. The layers panel. To go over that area right there, you'd have to double click on and again and see. Okay, I left it back here. That's why that's happening. Where this has some interesting possibilities is particularly interesting when we start talking about overlaying textures. On top of other things is if I go back here, not only can I take the top layer and say make areas see through, I can also take the underlying layer. Excuse me and say, make parts of that layer pushed through the top. So now, instead of doing any masking or anything, sometimes you can look out and kind of go Just by moving these triangles around, you start blending things in a way that's way faster than if you had to take a masking function and do a lot of painting. I'll very quickly add. There are times where this is frustratingly close to being perfect, but then it doesn't work because it is global. You can't just say take just this part of this layer and blend if it's take everything on this layer. So if you, for example, had a house with red shutters and a red fence and you said Just make the red shutters see through it'll Neidl won't do that will say anything is red because the same shade. So that's where the sort of the downside to a little bit. But the reason I think it's so powerful is for a couple reasons. First of all, you can tell almost instantly if it's in a worker, not because it took me longer, because I was explaining it. But normally you opened up. We will try and go. That looks pretty good or all that. Kate. I didn't work. Cancel The good part about again is you can do both this layer and underlying layer and do some really interesting blending type stuff with it, even overlapping. And when I click OK, that looks like a pretty dramatic change that I've made. But yet it's still just another effect I can turn on or off, as long as you're going to say at this point I save is a PSD that's a layer of function. So if I open it a year from now and go looking go well, that looks weird. How'd I do that? Because I can see the whole thing here. There is no mask. That little symbol tells me. Okay, I didn't must have done some other kind of blending options, so I can always go back and go. Oh, that's why I want to put this back here. But that over there, the only thing that throws people off about this and it is a little unusual, but it's just reality. I'm gonna do something pretty dramatic here so you can see have done something pretty obvious. Doesn't it look like almost all of that bar is just gone? But look what happens if I take this layer and say, Let's add a stroke to it. As far as its concerned, it's still all there because it is a temporary effect, so that throws some people officer like, Oh, I've deleted that layer. No, you have done a unusual form of hiding and not a mask. But it's like blending in to the point where, but technically it's still all there. So you might run into a situation where, like, that's perfect now just had a drop shot. And you know what? Because the drop shadows still saying, Yeah, the whole thing still there, even though your eyes are telling you it's not so it's a bit of a trick, but as we'll see particularly for things like overlaying textures and things like that, this is a wonderful ability that we have to say, Let's see what happens If so when it now, now that I know and this is the things I love it when you the more you start learning about photo shop, it's actually affected my photography because I used to walk around this happen to be in Italy a few years ago and took a lot of photos of like That's a cool landscape or this is a cool thing. And then I started thinking women blend if sliders that wall over there that's mostly white with some red brick and my brain starts looking at it as well. That part would be easy to move that slider. So I start thinking like photo shop. And now I capture textures, knowing that it's gonna work really well in with the blandest lives because there's enough contrast. So the blend of sliders live and die on. There has to be enough difference. So if you had a red brick wall that was almost exactly same shade of red blend, this lives would go. Go on. It's like there's no in between. Whereas if you looked at that brick wall angle, who there's ready orangey and there's pinky ones, there's yellow and there's lighter and there's darker right away. You know something's gonna happen a lot more interestingly than just something that's solid. So now when I'm walking around with my camera, I take photos not just of that's interesting building. But look at that crack in that wall and the fact that the right side is darker than the left side. That's interesting. So the textures that people are going to get as they're a little bonus here, the basic one is I think we said five. That right and then the other one is like 18 or something, and those who will look at them how we use them later on. But most of them are ones that I specifically shot thinking blend of sliders and blend modes and how that will help it blend in with the underlying document. But we'll talk about that more later on when we get into the world of overlays and textures and things like that.

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Dave Cross

For 25 years, Dave Cross has been helping photographers and creative professionals get the most out of their Adobe software. Since 1987, Dave has taught Adobe Photoshop®, Adobe Illustrator® and Adobe InDesign® to thousands of users around the world. He has a Bachelor of

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Adobe Photoshop Photo Editing

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karlafornia

I like Dave's teaching style: methodical, well-organized, VERY knowledgeable, interesting, relevant, and delivered with a really good sense of humor (he's a very snappy dresser, too!). Most of all, his lessons are most useful in teaching me how to save time processing my photos in a NON-destructive way and with a stream-lined workflow. This particular class is not only versed in technique, but I LOVE how he encourages creativity through experimentation and "playing" and pushing the envelop with the program. that is not as scary as it sounds because Dave is all about working with smart objects, smart filters and other such ways designed to save us from destroying our photos or work that has to be redone or scrapped because we went down a road of no return.

a Creativelive Student

Dave has a brilliant (as well as humorous) way of teaching and I always learn something new from him. I have purchased many of his previous classes and love every one of them! Thank you for another great course!

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'Blend If' Sliders & Blend Mode Shortcuts

'Blend If' Sliders & Blend Mode Shortcuts

Lesson Info

10. 'Blend If' Sliders & Blend Mode Shortcuts

Lessons

Course Intro

Layer Masks

Adjustment Layers

Clipping Masks

Intro to Groups & Smart Objects

Quick Mask

Defining & Creating a Brush

Smart Objects & Filters

Smart Objects from Adobe Camera Raw & Lightroom