How to Blend in Photoshop: What is Blending Tool & Modes?

 

What is Blend Modes?

Blend Modes in Photoshop is a tool to blend pixels of two images with each other to get different types of effects. Blend modes is popular among designers. It helps you to correct the photos and convert lighter images to darker or darker images to lighter. It also allows you to create several types of effects for specific images.

How to Blend Colors in Photoshop

Below is a step by step process on how to blend on Photoshop :

Step 1) Select the Image for Background

Here I have a ruff texture image for my background. I will use another image to blend in Photoshop with this background.

Step 2) Select the Image for whose background needs change.

Let me take another image to blend two images in Photoshop with the background texture.

So here are two different layers. To apply blending mode, you need to select the layer and open the blend mode list and choose any one of them.

Step 3) Types of Blend Modes

Blend mode menu is at the top of the layer panel, and by default, it is always on normal mode.

Look there are various types of Photoshop blending modes grouped in various categories in the list. You can choose any one of them and create a different effect using blend tool in Photoshop.

In blending mode list, each group of blend mode has specific functions.

Such as the first section here darkens the image. It effects the overall darkness of the picture.

The second group affects the overall brightness of the image. It allows lighter areas to show through and makes darker areas drop back.

The next group affects the lightness and darkness. I choose overlay here.

The next group of Photoshop blending tool creates inverted effects.

And the last group in the list deals with the colors of the image.

You can also change blend modes sequentially by pressing up and down arrow keys in blending tool in Photoshop.

Step 4) Apply Blend to the Image

“Multiply” is a better option for this image. It gives a striking look to this image.

We can also get blending modes in “layer style panel.”

For that, let me draw a new shape. Then give some layerstyle to it so that we can check blending modes there in “layer style panel.” Let me check on “outer glow” and set its parameters. Now you can see on top, the same list of blend modes over here, which was in blend mode menu out there in “layer panel.”

You can choose any blend mode you want.

One more thing is you can play with “opacity of layer” when using Photoshop blend tool to get a better result.

See I’m using color burn mode. I liked this blending in Photoshop effect, but it has over-brightened the image. So I can drag down the opacity of the background layer to set the image proper. Now you can see the difference.

Now I hope you got the basic idea of how powerful feature the “blend mode” is.