Playing with Layer Blending in Photoshop
I love the photography work by tibonihoo on Flickr, partially because he's one of many great photographers who allow their work to be remixed (I'm a big fan of remixing). So, for the purpose of this example, I'm going to be using three of his photographs to create a number of cool images using layer masking. It's incredibly simple, and it's how a lot of my hobbyist graphic design gets started.
Layer masking works best when you've got texture-based images, I find, so I'm going to use these three:
On the river Styx
Goblin's hide-out
Ugly Duckling
By simply choosing different layer masks with different opacities, you can easily create something new and possibly very interesting. What I like most about playing around in here is that every image added to the fold creates a new set of variants. It's one of the more fun things Photoshop offers. Also, you can toggle through the layer options really quickly with the shift and - and + keys.
With the top image on Overlay and the second image on Darken, You get something like this:
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With the top image on Color, and the second image on Hard Mix, you get something like this:
[image error]Finally, with the top image in Darker Colour and the second layer on Hard Light, you get something like this:
[image error]I almost never finish off an item using only these tools. In fact, sometimes I'll just see a bit of an image that changed in a way I like and then build from there. But because this is so fast and easy, it's a nice starting point.
