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About this lesson
Blend If is used when combining multiple images that contain strong color contrasts. It is also good for fast editing of multiple images.
Exercise files
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Quick reference
Topic
The ‘Blend If’ function of your Layer Styles panel is a useful tool for quick image manipulation.
When to use
When combining multiple images that contain strong color contrasts. Good for fast editing of multiple images.
Instructions
Analyse color channels
- On the Layers panel, switch to the ‘Channels’ panel
- Take note of the channels with the darkest and the brightest areas on the image that will be on top.
Combine images
- Drag the first photo over to the 2nd (a new layer should appear)
- Adjust layers so that the image you will be adjusting is on the bottom.
Adjust the blending options
- Double click the layer to open up the layer styles menu
- Use the specific color channels (in the example, blue) in the ‘Underlying Layer’ sections of the Blend If section
- Adjust dark blues by dragging the bar from left to right
- Soften the contrast by holding ALT and splitting the bar in two
Tip
Play with the multiple color channels to get the desired results. You can also add an image mask for fine tuning.
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- 00:04 Hey everyone, in today's video I'm going to demonstrate a feature in Photoshop that
- 00:08 tends to be overlooked by the average user.
- 00:10 And that's the Blend If controls. This feature works quite well if you're
- 00:14 let's say, trying to replace the sky in one of your photos. For example, in this photo
- 00:18 here, we're going to attempt to replace the boring blue sky
- 00:21 with this mountainous background. Now, before we start messing with new
- 00:25 features,
- 00:26 let's analyze this photo for a second by looking at our channels.
- 00:29 When looking through our channels, we want to try and find the channels with the
- 00:32 darkest and the brightest areas, and you'll see why in a few moments.
- 00:36 Looking at the blue channel, we can certainly see it has the darkest areas
- 00:40 out of the three channels,
- 00:41 especially when it comes to the trees, which is probably our most important
- 00:45 focus area.
- 00:46 As for the bright areas, our red channel seems to have a nice amount of brightness
- 00:50 in the sign.
- 00:51 Keep that in mind for later on. I'm going to go ahead and simply drag the mountain
- 00:56 photo on top of the photo with the sign
- 00:58 and place it were I'd like it to show up in the background. Now that that's in place,
- 01:03 double click on the top layer to open up our layer styles dialogue box.
- 01:07 Usually when we're here, it’s to add things like outer glows or bevels,
- 01:10 but today we're going to stay within the ‘Blending Options’ section.
- 01:14 Down at the bottom, we have Blend If, which right now is set to grey.
- 01:18 This is where channel analysis comes into play; Let's change grey to blue.
- 01:22 The top bar will affect areas of our current layer
- 01:26 and the bottom bar will affect the layer underneath it, so because we want to keep
- 01:30 the top layer intact,
- 01:31 we're going to focus on the bottom bar. Now if you remember from a few moments
- 01:35 ago, on the blue channel
- 01:37 there were a lot of dark areas: watch what happens when I drag the dark
- 01:41 slider to the right.
- 01:41 Those areas which fall in this range are starting to appear in
- 01:46 front of our image.
- 01:48 I'm going to stop when I see the blue from the original sky leak into the image.
- 01:52 Now as you can probably tell, if I zoom into the leaves there are a lot of sharp
- 01:55 edges. So how do we deal with that?
- 01:57 Well, it turns out that this slider is actually made up of two sliders.
- 02:02 If you hold down your ALT or Option key and drag the left side
- 02:05 out, the slider will split into two. This will allow the colors to transition,
- 02:10 giving us a much cleaner result. Now in terms of the sky, it's looking pretty
- 02:14 nice, but looking at the
- 02:15 building, there are some clear problems. So we're going to
- 02:19 use the brightness in the red channel to fix it up.
- 02:22 Once changed to red, instead of dragging the dark slider,
- 02:26 grab the light slider and drag it over until the blue start seeping in again,
- 02:30 right around 160. Now, just like before we can split the slider to create a nice
- 02:35 transition.
- 02:36 I'm going to drive you to the right and pop this one around 220.
- 02:40 Good, that’s looking great. Let's go ahead and accept it and take a look at the result.
- 02:44 What's neat about this technique is that you can drag the layer around
- 02:47 and it still maintains the blend. But you might notice that the job isn't 100
- 02:52 percent complete.
- 02:53 While the trees are looking really nice, there are some leftover bits on the
- 02:56 building.
- 02:57 This can easily be taken care of with a layer mask.
- 03:01 Once a layer mask is applied,
- 03:01 paint over the remaining areas with a black brush and you're done.
- 03:05 If you use this feature properly, the Blend If controls can be very helpful,
- 03:09 but it won't work for everything.
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