Using blending modes
Blending modes are used for mixing multiple layers together. There are great examples in Richard Harrington's wonderful book, Understanding Photoshop CS6 on pages 137 through 144. He has wonderful examples in his fabulous book....(yes I bought it and yes I love it,)
I have another way I use this tool as a filter with my picture as I go. It may seem hard at first but once you get the hang of it, you might love using this tool as much as I do. It is fast and dependable and I use it constantly.
So let's say you have a picture that is so far off that you don't even know what to do with it first. You can see an example on my website of a picture of a farmer that was so faded out that there was very little contrast when I started.
Of course, you can start out with automatic contrast. This gives you a great place to start. As I have said in previous blogs, I always take a look at one of the automatic fixes first to get a reference point--saving copies of my various "tangents" including my starting picture. I use one of the automatic tools from the 'Image' box at the top of Photoshop...such as 'automatic color' or 'automatic contrast' or 'automatic tone' on the picture. There is usually no real affect here but it gets you to the 'Fade" tool which appears in the Edit menu under 'Fade' followed by the name of the automatic tool you just used. Click on Edit/Fade and the drop down menu appears. Don't stop there....click the little drop down menu to the right and all kinds of blending options appear.
Then, I take the drop down menu and scroll through the options. There are 27 of them. Practice with a couple...like screen or color burn. Once you drop down the options, you can choose the tool and then dial it up and back from 100%. This tool gives you a seemingly infinite amount of quick adjustments in one place that are pretty nice...I use it for pictures that have absolutely no contrast with the difference tool. You should take a moment and try each one to get an idea of how they work. But I always use this shortcut to get to the fade tool by using one of the three automatic adjustments first. (automatic color, automatic contrast, automatic tone). I especially like the screen tool.
There is probably another way to do this but I have been doing it this way for so long that I really like it. Each blending option has it's own wonderful effect. And if you decide you don't like any of the adjustments, you don't have to back out of lots of history...you just dial back, hit the 'Edit' 'Back' and you can try other
filtering tools.
Additionally, you can always add cross hatch or find edges to get different effects. I can talk about these and the way cool oil painting effects too in an upcoming blog. The purists can skip that part...but for me and my customers, there is nothing like making a picture look like an oil painting with a couple of applied filters and a brushed on finishing polymer coating that dries to look like brush strokes.
Thanks for reading my blog. I hope you will continue to stay with me as I show you what I learn and the things I discover when I go exploring for new ways to work with PhotoShop...the most incredible program ever in my humble opinion.
Thanks,
Renee L Theuer
www.rltphotoartist.com
renee@rltphotoartist.com
photorestoration4u.com
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