Photoshop Technique: Compositing with Blend Modes

Monday, July 19, 2010 Posted in Technique, Videos, Workshop

I thought I’d start the week off by posting a recent Photoshop tutorial that I put together for TipSquirrel.com last week where I go through a technique for combining images to create ‘composites’.

With the enhanced Refine Edge function in the latest release of Adobe Photoshop CS5, making selections has never been easier. However making a selection is one thing but dropping that selection into another image and making it look realistic is another. This is where blend modes can come into play as you’ll see in the following video where I take an image that I shot in a studio against a white backdrop and swap that backdrop for one ‘more fitting’ to the look and feel I was after but still managing to include fine details such as hair; and what’s more, it’s all done extremely quickly.

Enjoy:)

It’s always great to ‘hear’ your thoughts / comments so as always please feel free to use the comments section below.

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4 comments

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July 19, 2010 - 9:12 am

David Kelly - Hi Glyn,

Hope you’re keeping well.

Nice tip here - I was very interested in how you got that textured layer as a background when you initially posted those images of Danny. Glad to see just how straightforward & easy it was :-)
I always find it enlightening to see how much can be achieved by layers blend modes. As much as Photoshop keeps adding new features with each new release e.g. Content Aware Fill, it’s amazing to think that a feature that was available right back in version 3 (I think) of Photoshop is still so powerful.

Regards,

David

July 19, 2010 - 5:50 pm

kelley - Fantastic post. A great reason to move into CS5

Thanks, kelley

July 19, 2010 - 6:32 pm

Glyn - @David…Good to hear from you mate and yeah all is well this end.

Glad to hear you liked the tip and yeah you gotta love those blend modes :)

Cheers,
Glyn

July 19, 2010 - 6:34 pm

Glyn - @Kelley…The great thing about this tip Kelley is that you don’t need to have CS5; just make use of the blend modes in whatever version of Photoshop you have installed and you’re rocking :)

Cheers,
Glyn

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