4. The Conditional Blendmodes
I'm using the word 'conditional' in the title because the next couple of blending modes are in fact combinations of two different blending modes. It's a long list but most of them don't receive a lot of use:
Overlay
Soft Light
Hard Light
Vivid Light
Linear Light
Pin Light
The way it works is pretty simple: which blending mode is being used depends on the brightness of either the Base or the Blend layer. If it is brighter than 50% it uses one blendmode, if it is darker it uses another. When the layer is exactly 50% gray the result is an unchanged image.
Take the Overlay blendmode for example, this is what is does:
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The Overlay blendmode: uses a different blendmode for dark or light colours. According to the manual it uses the Multiply and Screen blendmodes, but the effects are much more like Color Burn and Color Dodge (more contrast and saturation).
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If the colour is 50% gray then the result is left unchanged, just like white for the darkening blendmodes and black for the brightening blendmodes.
Painting with dark colours intensifies the dark areas in the base layer. Painting with light colours makes the highlights lighter. The Overlay blendmode adds contrast and saturation.
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The Overlay blendmode: Adds contrast and saturation
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The Overlay mode is very useful because you can both darken and lighten the image with just one layer. This saves time since you don't have to switch layers when painting. Just set your foreground and background colours to blank and white and swap them around with 'X' white painting.
Here is an example of adding details and shading to a texture with the Overlay blendmode:
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Adding details and shading with just one layer thanks to the Overlay blendmode.
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Very much like Overlay, but the result is much more subtle.
Here is an example of the Soft Light blendmode with the gradient test pattern:
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The Soft Light blending mode. It would be just as easy to use Overlay and set it to 50% opacity.
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Dark colours are Multiplied, light colours are Screened.
As you can see the blend layer has a lot of influence on the result.
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The Hard Light blending mode. Multiply and Screen in one layer.
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"Overlay on steroids". Like placing two layers set to Overlay on top of each other.
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Vivid Light: A stronger version of Overlay.
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Here is a tip from Wojtek Starak: "use the Vivid blendmode in combination with a low density High Pass filter to sharpen your image."
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Sharpening with Vivid Light: copy the layer and apply a 1-3 pixel High Pass filter (Filter->Other->High Pass). Set the blending mode to Vivid Light.
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I should note that the High Pass filter works well with all conditional blendmodes and not just Vivid Light. This is because the average colour after the High Pass filter is 50% gray, with the details being either darker or lighter. Since 50% gray leaves the image unchanged only the details will get blended in.
Linear light looks like the result you get when you place 5 or 6 layers set to Soft Light on top of each other. Very strong, but without the increase of saturation of Vivid Light.
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Linear Light: A much stronger version of Soft Light.
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A mix between the Darken and Lighten blending modes.
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Pin Light: Darken and Lighten in one blendmode.
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I've rearranged all the blendmodes in this group and places them all in one image to show the differences. There is always a blendmode with the amount of contrast or saturation you need:
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The 'conditional' blendmodes arranged by their effects.
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Copyright 2007 - CGTextures
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