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Blending Options: Blend if

Now let's actually go to something simpler than that, something I use more frequently. And what I'm gonna do is take these two layers and I'm going to choose load files into photo shop players that's going to stack these. And what I'd like to do is remove the background on the fireworks. And we used these fireworks in a previous lesson, one that covered lending modes, if you happen to have watched that one or owned that one, But here I actually want to delete the background, whereas in that lesson we just made it somehow disappear, even though it was still contained within the layer. Um, here's what I'm gonna do with the top layer active. I'll go to the bottom of my layers panel, click on FX, and I'll choose blending options. And that will cause this to open and just say no. There's more than one way of getting to this. So if you've ever seen this and you got to it in a different way, it was the same screen. There's only one screen that looks like that other ways you can get to it woul...

d be to go the layer menu you choose later style, and there's blending options that would get you to it. Or I think you can double click on the layer not on the name but out here in the empty space in that will get you to it as well. So you might use use one of those other techniques, and you might just be wondering, Is it the same thing you're using? Yes, it is if it looked like this, and now I want to use an area that I call the blend if sliders. And that's because it has the heading above of blend. If now it's set to blend. If gray in that means, think of this like a black and white or gray scale picture, ignore the colors. Then there are two sets of sliders. There's one called This Layer. In any time you see this layer, it's referring to whatever layer was active at the time you brought this up, and then it says underlying layer, and that refers to whatever is underneath the layer that is currently active. I wish it wouldn't say underlying layer, though it should say underlying image, because it might be 10 or 12 or 100 layers that are under there, and it just means collectively. Whatever all that stuff looks like, it's not just looking at one layer that's under it. Now let's see what this does. Uh, if I bring in the upper left slider, it's looking at this layer. And if you look at that upper left slider, it's pointing at black at the moment, and as I bring it in, it will hide anything that is to the left of that slider. That means it will hide anything in that brightness range within this layer, and so the sky is either black or close to it. So when I just brought it in the tiniest amount, the sky started to disappear. And then, if I continue to bring it in, I get more and more of the dark areas disappear. If you look at the fireworks, you'll notice there's darker fireworks remnants. It might be the the smoke from fireworks behind the really bright stuff. If I bring it in far enough, I should eventually be able to get that stuff to start disappearing in. All it's doing is hiding the brightness range that is, to the left of the slider. The problem with it is it. It's either on or it's off. There's no fade out, no soft transition. We can get us off transition. If you look at this slider, you'll notice there's a line down the middle of it. And that's to indicate it's actually two sliders that are magnetically stuck together. They just move together like that. You can spot him apart. The way to split them apart is to hold down the option key Alton Windows. I haven't held down right now and then grab either end and pull away from the other. See how that just split it. So now, when it's set up that way, here's what's happening. Anything on the far left over here will be hidden. Anything to the right of the two sliders collectively over here will be fully visible. And then anything in this zone in between them is where things are going to fade out. So it'll be completely hidden right at this shade, and that will be hidden less and less and less and less and less until it's not hidden at all when he gets to hear, so that causes it to fade out. It's just that usually those two things are stuck together. So how did I end up using that? Well, when it comes to this image, I pull this in until I noticed the sky disappear. And then if I were to zoom up on the picture, I would notice there was a hard transition abrupt one where the background stops disappearing. So I hold on the option key and I split the slider, and I pull this out until it looks like a nice, gradual transition that looks natural. So then there are another set of sliders down here, and it's called underlying layer. And instead of making things disappear, which is what the top windows underlying layer makes, things show up. So if I were to pull this in the dark, parts of what's underneath would suddenly start showing up instead of the contents of this layer. Or if I pulled in the opposite side, it would be the bright parts of what's underneath. So let me see if I bring in the bright parts of what's underneath of eventually, these bright parts of the tower that might be in this position might start coming through. No, they're starting to break through. Do you know So let's use this on a few images in trying to get a better feel for it. I'm gonna combine to other images by choosing tools. Photoshopped load into Photoshopped layers and so I'm gonna put the one on top. There we go. So what we have here is just some clouds and then we have this which is found in Barcelona, Spain. Um and I would like to have this on top of those clouds instead of the ones that came with. So with the top layer active, I'll go to the letters FX, choose blending options. And if I want the background to disappear, that's the bright areas. So that means I grabbed the upper right slider because we're thinking about this layer and we're thinking about making the bright areas disappear. Now. Anything to the right of this slider in that brightness range will disappear, and I'll bring it in until I get it to bring it up, maybe to about there. Then I want whatever is left to fade out. So I hold on the option key Culleton windows so I can split the slider and I move it even further until it looks like a nice transition. So now we've gotten that on a new background. But then I could experiment with the underlying layer sliders. What if I want some of the clouds that are currently behind this in the layer underneath? I want them to break through this layer so it looks a Ziff. That object is partially in the clouds. Well, I could bring this in to say, Let the bright parts of what's underneath start to break through and I'll bring it up just until I start seeing some clouds. They're on the right side breakthrough. Then I'm going to split the slider in half by holding option and dragging to get a soft transition. You know, try to get it pretty nice and soft like that. And then I confined to in both ends of the sliders. There we go. Let's try another one. In this case, I'm Inter, take bottom layer and put it on top on a scale it down. So it's about the same height as the image that's underneath. So just type command t and all skill this guy down, maybe to about there, and I'll move it, and then what I'm gonna do is crop the image so we don't have this empty spot at the bottom. So just grab the crop tool, Pull this out like that press for turnaround. Now, what I'd like to do is make the bright areas of the top layer disappeared so I can see what's behind them. In fact, I think I might want to crop the image. Seymour let me grab the crop tool once again and I'm gonna pull in the sides. There's no need to see that extra stuff. Yeah, more like that. All right, now let's go with the top layer active in choose blending options. And if I want the bright areas to disappear, that's the upper right sets this layer and it's the bride stuff. And then I wanted to fade out. So I hold option and I split the slider and I get that, too spread out as far as I want. Ah, be about like that. Click OK, I might then grab my move tool and move the layer that's underneath to get that temple centred more that I could go back to the top layer, go back to FX and blending options, and we can play more. What if I want the temple to break through. Well, the temple is darker than what's surrounding the temple. So I go underlying layer. So it's thinking about what's under there. And I said, Let the dark parts breakthrough, okay? And then maybe split the slider just to make sure it's a gradual transition. That's kind of weirdly different. Maybe experiment with the top sliders to maybe bring some of it back. All right, Um, or if I put these back to their default positions, cook. Okay, so I didn't get a mocks. There's still stuff hidden. Let me see. What did I forget? I didn't bring that back. I could have instead change the order of the layers. Been working on the layer that's on top, blending options. And now I could get a similar effect by saying, Take the dark stuff that's underneath and let her breakthrough. It's There's nothing near Black, so it takes a while. And then from there, not I wanted toe fade out. So I hold option and split it. Okay, that's similar. And, um, all sorts of things you can do with it. But there, the blending sliders. Now, let me let you know that It's not just when you're attempting to making composite, we're combining more than one image. Instead, this could be used for other things. Let's say, for instance, here, what I'd like to do is my wife. Here is Karen. She's in the sun, the columns air in the sun, and I like the warmth that I'm seeing there. But what if I want to make on Lee the dark portion of the image less colorful? So the area behind Karen, that wall that's back there, I want to be less colorful. I don't want to make any selections. So let's go over here and do a hue and saturation or a vibrant adjustment layer. Either one, because both of them offer saturation and I'll turn it down. I'll turn it all the way down, so it's easy to tell when it where it's applying. Now, when you have an adjustment layer, it thinks that the contents of that layer is whatever the result of the adjustment looks like. So it thinks that that layer contains what you're seeing right now on the screen. So I go to F ax and I choose blending options, and now I can say, Let's let the bright parts of this layer disappear, and if we dio, it will reveal the layer that's underneath. So I'll bring this in, tell the bright stuff, shows up. Then I'll hold down the option key all time Windows, and I'll split the slider and move it further and see if I can figure out how far I can get away with it all depends if I want that top portion where the arches are to be colored or not. I think I do want some of that, but I don't want so much that the area behind Karen is so it's a kind of, ah, delicate balance there. Click OK, and now, if I turn this off and on, look at the area behind Karen and you see that it's becoming less colorful now. In this particular instance, when I was in here, it actually wouldn't have mattered if I used this layer underlying image sliders because what's underneath? I could say, Let the bright parts of what's underneath show through, and it's the same general result. And then I could split the slaughter so you could flip a coin. It wouldn't matter which one, but I do that often if I want an adjustment to only affect the bright or the dark portions