One of the most useful, but complex, functions of Photoshop is the layer blending options. At the top of the Layers palette is a pulldown menu that by default says “normal”–but normal’s no fun! Extraordinarily dynamic compositions can be reached with careful use of layer blending. Their uses are expansive: subtle changes in tone, color, and shading can be easily applied, and on the flip side of the coin, wildly bold and dramatic changes can occur within just one or two layers blended with each other.

A bit of explanation of what layer blending actually is. The term is straightforward enough-it is mixing one layer with another-but this isn’t the whole picture. In sequential order (going by the stacking of layers on the palette), you can blend together as many layers as you want! Keep in mind, the layer blending affects the layer directly beneath it, but if that layer is blended with the layer below it as well, then the top blend is actually blending the result of the two below it. Confused? The two figures below might help.

Figure 1 & 2

The Layer Blending menu has 25 different options, grouped in 6 categories, based on how they blend.

Normals

• Normal
• Dissolve

“Normal” is the default setting and can be thought of as a base for your blending needs. Layers set as normal will not become transparent as a result of blending, and so serve best as the bottom layer of any particular composition or component. “Dissolve” I have rarely found useful, its only function seemingly to be to create noise around the edges of the object.

Darkeners

• Darken
• Multiply
• Color Burn
• Linear Burn
• Darken Color

This group all deal with blending only the dark areas of a layer. Note that using layer blends in this category don’t necessarily mean that they always darken–in the figure above, orange and blue colors are combined to create a greenish tone. “Multiply” is the most used layer blend for me; it is excellent at evenly accentuating darker tones in a picture without affecting the lighter tones. “Color Burn” and “Linear Burn” are more bold variants, tending to narrow the range of shades in the effected area. One major tip is any white present in a layer that has a darkener layer blend applied to it is that the white will leave the area on the layer below unmodified. See Figure 3 for an example.

Figure 3

Above our oranges, I’ve put a layer of some rendered clouds on Multiply (increased contrast using Levels). The spots that show through are white, and the spots that are black are also black on the cloud layer.

Lighteners

• Lighten
• Screen
• Color Dodge
• Linear Dodge
• Lighter Color

This is the counterpart to the previous grouping, blending areas of light colors and white. Screen is the opposite of Multiply: see Figure 4 for an illustration. I’ve simply changed the blending from “Multiply” to “Screen”.

Figure 4

You’ll notice the areas of black are now showing through, and the white is remaining present, as opposed to disappearing.

Colorizers

• Overlay
• Soft Light
• Hard Light
• Vivid Light
• Linear Light
• Pin Light
• Hard Mix

Each of these layer blends in this grouping will do interesting things to the colors and shading. Experimenting with the various changes they cause is the best way to get a feel for how they can be used, since both light and dark shades are utilized in this set. Dramatic changes can be achieved by using multicolored layers, and blending them onto monochromatic layers. I make use of “Overlay” the most out of this set, as it acts like a combination of both “Multiply” and “Screen”.

The remainder of the layer blends I will not list here, as their utility is limited and pretty specialized. I have yet to find a situation that calls for their use, so I will leave it up to you to play around with them! The same applies for the rest, though–the best way to gain an understanding of how each works, and what applications are best for each one, is to experiment!

I was linked to a very interesting blog post, via Twitter, about Five Defining Characteristics of a Great CEO, and it really made me think about the ways I lead the Tridea team. Now even though I, 100%, agree with the 5 characteristics (personal insight, resourcefulness, courage, willingness to look at risk, and foresight), I think one key factor could be added, and that is motivation.

One thing that I’ve always noticed about great leaders, is that they are very motivating. They keep their team pumped with confidence. The team trusts their leader to keep them inspired to do great things. It doesn’t stop in business. The best example of this might be in sports. You can’t look at a championship team without assessing how the coach (the team motivator) got them there. Coaches have tons of different motivation tactics to get their team excited about going out to compete.

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” - Jim Rohn

It’s an excellent cycle that works wonders. When you can motivate your team, they become inspired. When they’re inspired, they become excited about doing great work. I believe that any leader of a team needs to know how to motivate their team. If you are unsure how to do that, at least Google it to get started. You’d be surprised on how enthusiastic your team can be with the right motivation.

This is just a friendly reminder from all of us at Tridea that this Tuesday, November 4th is Election Day and we’d like you to get out and VOTE! Why? Because this great country runs on the voice of the people and this is one of the best ways to make your voice heard. If you don’t voice your opinion, then you’re letting others choose for you!

Not sure where to vote? Find your polling place.

Not sure who to vote for? Take this handy quiz to find out. Or read up on the candidates.

This election is predicted to have the highest voter turnout in history, so make sure you get included in that statistic!

Photocompositions are one of the primary uses of photoshop: to integrate seamlessly several images to produce a new reality represented in the resulting image. Look through your Sunday advertisements, I guarantee you will find dozens of instances of this; this morning I found the Hulk sitting on a couch to watch his namesake film with a family in a Best Buy ad.

The foremost challenge to creating images of this nature is that the photos to be integrated have to have a kind of interplay already. When dealing with objects that will interact with each other, they must be able to achieve realistic proportion, form and lighting. To some extent, we can manipulate these three factors, but in the end, if the photo isn’t right, those efforts will be moot.

I’ll be going through some basic concepts and steps to create this composition I put together.
View full-size here.

I used 4 images from stock.xchng, my favorite stock photo site: the sink, the hole, the wall texture, and the head.

I began with the sink image as my foundation. The lack of vertical perspective (seeing into the sink or under the sink) can be challenging or very easy to work with, depending on the availability of photos that compliment this angle. Many of the texture sets on stock.xchng are taken head-on, with no vertical perspective, so using the Distort or Perspective from Edit > Transform can very easily allow them to match up with whatever vertical and horizontal perspectives you’re working with.

In my case, I needed only to put the texture above my sink layer and set layer blending to Linear Burn. All that was left was to apply a mask to the texture layer and mask out the sink area.

Next up was the insertion of the head. Thinking of the shape of the sink, I figured that the head wouldn’t be able to sit in it totally upright. I rotated and then masked accordingly, trying to achieve a natural look to the way the head was positioned in the sink. I lucked out on the lighting used in the original photo, as the directions of light and shadow is mostly accurate. Watching out for shadows and dark areas on photos you plan to integrate is a major consideration to make. As best as you can, try to approximate the direction that the light source is coming from, and judge its suitability from there. Many times, it doesn’t make or break an image since the application of the Burn and Dodge tool can fix it enough so as to be less noticeable.

It’s missing a little something–shadows. On two layers, one above the head and one below, I added shadows using the brush tool to add a shadowcast on the wall behind the head and one on the head from the inside edge of the sink.

The last component was the hole in the wall. This particular photo is a real find, since it appears to be without any vertical perspective, but has a slight amount of horizontal perspective to show off the great textures along the inside of the wall where the hole was made. After setting the hole layer blending to Multiply, I positioned the image where I wanted, and masked everything on that layer except the hole itself. I used the Dry Media brush set that comes with Photoshop to touch up the mask around the hole.

All in all, it is a simple photocomposition, but the more elements that are added, the more important it becomes that a cohesive balance is kept in regards to the three principles I mentioned earlier: proportion, form and lighting. I continued to embellish the image and arrived to this final composition–perfectly spooky for Halloween!

We love meeting new people, especially those that find our work interesting and want to work with us. Part of the excitement for any project is the beginning, where all ideas are in discovery and both sides are excited to get things started. That is a key part of a project, and where great relationships and trust start.

The one way that we don’t like being approached is someone (or company) just sending in an RFP. There is nothing personable about it. We don’t like starting off communication by reading a document. We like starting off by either in-person meetings or a phone call. We like to get to know who we’re going to be working with, and that can’t happen when we’re spending hours mulling over a huge document.

Our job is to help you solve business problems through great design. For that to happen, we need to work together on identifying those business problems that need solving. Without those discovery meetings, and us falling back to a document, that makes our job a little harder, and we get the feeling we’re being talked to, instead of being talked with.

So if you’re ever interested in working with us, we just ask that you approach us like a human being and talk to us. We’re friendly and love meeting new people. It’d be starting off on a bad foot if we receive a document first. We want to talk first!