Blend if Archives - DIY Photography

This simple Smart Object trick solves “Blend If” transparency issues in Photoshop

February 6, 2018 by John Aldred 2 Comments

Photoshop’s Blend If sliders are wonderfully useful and powerful tools. They allow us to seamlessly blend two images together with ease, or knock out elements of our images completely. But, they’re not without their quirks. One of those quirks is kind of a double-edged sword. The perk, and problem is that it takes adjustments you make to the image into account before it applies the blend.

This can be very handy when merging two different landscape images together, for example. But it can be completely useless for other purposes. In this 90 second video, Jesús Ramirez from the Photoshop Training Channel shows us a workaround for this. It’s a trick I often use myself for images here on DIYP, especially when compositing product photos onto new backgrounds.

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How to use Photoshop’s “Blend If” feature like a pro

February 5, 2018 by Dunja Djudjic 1 Comment

Blend If is a very useful Photoshop tool. Jesús Ramirez of Photoshop Training Channel calls it “the unsung hero,” and he wants to teach you how to use this handy feature. In his video tutorial, you’ll learn some theory about “Blend If” and how to use it to replace the sky, create special effects and apply textures in Photoshop.

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Making perfect skies with luminosity masks and Blend If sliders

December 19, 2016 by John Aldred 1 Comment

Masking different layers based on brightness is an often tricky but vital Photoshop skill to have. There’s a bunch of different ways of doing it from the simple to the advanced. Two of the most common methods are by using Luminosity Masks or with Photoshop’s “Blend If” layer options.

While the two might appear to do similar things on a quick glance, there are some pretty distinct differences between the two. Black Rudis from F64 Academy looks into both methods to show us how they work. Each has advantages over the other depending on what you’re trying to achieve. And both will let you do things that the other simply cannot.

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How to reduce noise and more easily work with “Blend if” layer sliders in Photoshop CC

June 13, 2016 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

Photoshop’s layer blending options are some of its most powerful tools but also one of its most frustrating, particularly the “Blend if” sliders. Designed to help you blend a layer with those below it based on the luminance of colour channels, actually seeing what’s effect it’s having on a layer often can be difficult.

In this video from the f64 Academy, Blake Rudis shows us a technique for dealing with “Blend if” to be able to easily see what part of the image our layer is covering, and applies it to some noise reduction.

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