#blendingmode

Blending mode exercise 2

Blending modes are divided in 6 sections (see above). I replaced the portrait in the colour test chart by a photo of my grandmother and used a portrait of a friend when I was practicing for the ‘seeing the light’ brief as my illusion photos don’t show as many colours so I think this photo will show more things under different blending modes. 

The first group is called ‘normal’ and reveals the pixels below by changing the opacity of the layer (you can only see the layer above at full opacity like the picture above).

The second group is called ‘darken’, as the example shows below. The resulting blend will be darker. The image becomes progressively darker. It’s good to restore shadows and fix overexposed photos.

The third group is called ‘lighten’ (below) and is the opposite of the darken mode as the resulting blend will become brighter. It’s good to brighten highlights and fixing underexposed photos.

The fourth mode is the ‘contrast’ mode. The mode both brightens the brightest tones and darkens the darkest tones in the image to create more contrast. Below I chose the overlay blending mode which seems to be the most popular one, creating a good average amount of contrasts while the other types of light might be more particular and not as suitable for any type of photos.

The fifth mode is the inversion mode. It aligns layers in similar content. Below I chose the subtract mode (below), it subtracts the blend colour from the base colour. Black has no effect, similar colours cancel each other, and the resulting colour is black.

And the final mode is the component mode. The blending will only affect the selected component. Below I chose the luminosity mode. It keeps the luminance of the active layer, and blends it with hue and saturation of the composite view of the layers below.