Blending Layers With The Layer Options Palette

Blending parts of one layer into another is easy to do using the layers sliders in Photoshop. In this example, we will show just a few of the hundreds of possible combinations you can use when you play with the options in the Layer Options palette. 1. Create or open an image that has two layers you want to blend together. In this example we want to reveal the lower layer image through the dark background color from the lace layer. Select the top layer. Throughout this document, “Command/ Ctrl” means Command on the Macintosh and Ctrl on Windows. “Option/Alt” means Option on the Macintosh and Alt on Windows. 2. Double-click the layer name in the Layers palette to bring up the Layer Options dialog box. Since we want to drop out the dark background on the lace layer, we will move the shadow triangle on the This Layer slider to the right. Use the sliders in the Layer Options palette to define which pixels will appear in your composite image. For example, if you want to hide all the dark areas, move the shadow slider to the right. All the pixel values between 0 and the new shadow value number will not show in the composite image. 3. Another effect might be to have the floral background show through only the highlighted areas of the lace. To do this, split the highlight slider triangle by holding down the Option/Alt key and drag it to the left. For smoother transitions, you can split the triangles in half. Hold down the Option/Alt key while dragging the triangle, and it will split. For example, in step 3 the range for highlight values is now between 23 and 255. This means that all the pixels between those two values will appear with only some of their original colors. 4. In this example we created the effect of applying the lace texture to the fabric while still retaining the folds and shadows of the underlying fabric. Turn the preview button on while you experiment. This allows you to see what the result will be as you try different modes and layer-blending combinations. 5. This example is similar to the one in step 4 except that we moved the highlight slider for the Underlying layer. The result is a much lighter image. 6. Experimenting with different modes will give you even more options for interesting visual effects. In this example, we split the highlight slider triangle for the lace layer. This allows some of the colors of the floral fabric to come through the light-colored lace. To give the colors more punch, we used the Luminosity mode.