Tool 1: How to Use Blend-If Modes
Lesson 3 from: Creative Application of Color Through Post ProcessingPratik Naik
Tool 1: How to Use Blend-If Modes
Lesson 3 from: Creative Application of Color Through Post ProcessingPratik Naik
Lessons
Lesson Info
Tool 1: How to Use Blend-If Modes
the first technique is going to be something that IQ's called blend if modes okay, blend if modes are really fun. That's why I'm showing you this first, because they're easier to do than a lot of other other techniques. How many of you are familiar? Familiar with blend if modes great, that's good. Now blend if modes of powerful because you really don't even need to know what you're doing. Aside from playing with sliders, I'm gonna show you how to put it into effect on how to modify it, using your swatches that we selected earlier. So first thing first, I'm going to open up my layers here. If you don't have layers, seem to go toe window and you go to layers. Next. I'm simply going to go in ad a solid color adjustment there. What solid color adjustment layer does is basically just puts a solid color over here. Fancy stuff right? Next one asked you to pick a color. I simply to go nice back to my swatches and pick the color that I want. Let's say pick this warm amber orange color. I'm not ...
good with names of colors, so as something you get the point. Okay. Someone hit. Okay. Once I've selected the color that I want, I'm gonna go in select color. Not that complicated, right? So far. Let's say I want to apply this to a specific region. Maybe the highlights. I can do so by going and right clicking on the layer, but make sure it's not on the layer mask. Make sure it's on the layer itself or the name of the layer and slightly in blending options. Okay, Now, over here in blending options. All this looks really complicated if you're not familiar with this, so don't freak out. Follow me here. And that's how you record the so you can watch it over and over again, which is fantastic at the bottom. You'll see these. Ah, two sliders. This is the one we're gonna want to pay attention to. What do you think this means? 0 to 2 black to white. Yes. It's effectively your hissed, a gram and your information. The image no we have to do is select the area that we want active. So, for instance, can you bring us here if I start moving the left slider in? What's gonna happen as you notice on the image is that layer doesn't affect the whole image. It only effects the region that's active so you can see visually. Here's this is the highlight, your brightest point. And on the left it stops working right here, right before the mid tone start and effectively. What that does now is you see that orange tint and color Onley being applied to some of the highlights. But we have a big problem, and the problem is that it cuts off really drastically, and that doesn't look really good, so we could move this back and forth. But that's not gonna solve that issue. Thankfully, there's a way to do that. And if you hit option, I can feather it so I can say, Start feathering from the area. We stopped and start feathering all the way to where I wanted to feather to. I can also move this over here so it starts working what sooner in the highlights and starts feathering off in it and someone the midterms, and it's really easy to understand because it's all visual. Every time you move the slider, it shows you what's happening. It's a live update thing you have to enter a number and you have to do any calculations. It's really straightforward and simple. Okay, it's really fun. So now I can move it over here and I can decide. You know what? Well, I didn't like that. Maybe I want more of it. Maybe I want a little bit of the mid tones, then had option and slice it. So it starts feathering. And I know what you're thinking. Well, this looks disgusting. I'm like, Yes, I know, but this is just the tools to tell you how to do it. Then you decide whatever you want to do, whatever clothes you like, whatever your preferences years are. Okay, let's say we decide that. Ah, you know, we want to go for something like this. The other benefit is we have capacity, right? So if we decide that we actually don't, I want that we can bring it up lower. Whatever it is, we can also then change the color. So if we decide to override it, the saturation of it cause left to right, go saturation. Right and top to bottom goes luminosity. So if you want to make sense of this color picker that's how to do it. So if you decide that maybe you know what you like that color. But you wanted something similar with that same level of saturation. Just move this up and down. If you decided that. You know what? I like that color. But maybe I wanted less saturation than just move horizontally. And so that's how to control that. So you can see really simply, I was able to target specific regions without actually having to figure out how am I gonna mask this? How am I gonna figure out where it's gonna land? The other awesome thing about this is that you know what? Maybe there's certain areas of the image that you don't affected me. The background also has a highlight or something. Maybe the legs and you don't want it affected their You have a mask, so you have full control of what you want to do with the blend. If options, it's a burning question. So far, so you're using the, um, under laying layers later. When would you use the Slayer? So the the the this layer slider is basically only gonna work when you have, um, let's let me give you an example. Let me duplicate this. Okay. And underneath this layer, I'm going to add just a blank color. Let's just say like dark red. If I use this layer, what's gonna happen is it only works on the information on that specific layer. So now if I go across here, it starts cutting away part of the actual layer itself. So it figures out where the highlight is of that layer and then cut that out. So if I have like a solid layer, it really won't do anything because the whole layers, you know, that one specific highlight or shadow whatever it ISS, so most the time from using adjustment layers, it's going to be underlying causes, looking for stuff that's underneath that layer to blend with. Also, this works really interestingly because you can add multiple, uh, solid color layers. So if I had a blue actually, let me just stick to my who color palette here and say, I'm going here disliked Magenta. I'll go really quickly and do it again repetition sake. And if I go over here and then only work in the deeper shadows, for instance, what happens is I can then decide what color I want in the deeper shadows, and that's how to color tone images in a really fun way. You can also select your mid tones. You can also select a color specifically for like the deepest shadows and 14 shadows. The not as deep you could do a whole bunch of things of this and we do is quite often.
Ratings and Reviews
Amy Vaughn
Pratik gave a nice range of tips for ways to color images creatively. I especially liked that he went over a workflow with Photoshop and CaptureOne, since that's my workflow too and it's sometimes harder to find those classes. His tips for adjusting skin tones were especially useful and something I'm always thinking about now when I edit photos of people. I also appreciated the way he explained the differences between hue and color, and I even learned a couple of new tricks with blend modes. His teaching style was engaging and I'd love to see more classes from him.
a Creativelive Student
basic info but nice artist, enjoyed the work flow