Photoshop Blend If Tutorial – How To Use Blend If Slider In Photoshop

How To User Blend If Slider In Photoshop

In today’s video, I’m gonna show you how to use the Blend If sliders in Photoshop. When combining the power of Blend If sliders in blending mode, there’s no better way to blend layers to get.

Photoshop Blend If Explained

So, to get to the Blend If options there are two different ways. You can come up here to Layer, Layer Style, and Blending Options, and bring up the other options for Blend If or we can double-click on the layer just like this. We’re gonna be dealing with just these Blend If sliders down here. Right here where it says Blend If we’re going to be dealing with luminosity only so we will be using the gray. So these sliders here represent the luminosity spectrum of the layer and this layer right here we’re gonna be talking about first. It’s actually called, this layer is the luminosity spectrum of the selected layer which is this top one right here. So let’s see what this does. So when I move the slider on the left for this layer, you could see that it is already moving, it removes the darkest part of the image. And if I come to this right side and move it’s going to remove the lightest part of the image. So, the lightest part is usually highlights or lightest parts of the image and this slider over here, the darkest part is usually the shadows. What you can also do is hold the alt or the option key and split the slider, and it makes kind of a graduated or feathered edge right there so you get a smooth transition. You can also do this on the right-hand side. You can see the feathering there. Sliders control visibility so this is just an example of using these layer sliders and what that can do for you. Now for the most part when you use Blend If, you’re going to be using the underlying layer. So when we work with the underlying layer it’s going to affect all the layers below.

Adding Color To The Sky

Okay, in this example I wanna add some colors to the lighter parts of the sky. So, we’re gonna do that with Blend If but first I’m going to create a new layer and on this layer, I need to paint a color. Let’s choose something that’s getting into the orange here. Okay and with the brush, oh, I’m gonna put my flow around 20 and paint just in these areas. Okay and now I’m going to change the blend mode to soft light, double-click on my layer style here and in this case I’m working with the underlying layer and so, I had the layer two here above selected. So, the underlying layer is affected by the layer above. So, the underlying layer being layer one so I’m gonna move the slider on the left. And so, when I do that it’s gonna protect the shadows and allow the effect from the layer above to only affect the highlights. So, I’m going to move the slider over, move this out of the way and we can see that it’s only gonna be in my highlights that I am making a change. See, okay, go back and check my blend modes. I think soft light or overlay, I might like overlay. Like all that color and I think I’ll create another layer and I’m going to paint with another color. Get in here, the light areas. Just paint all over the place. Double-click to bring up my Blend If sliders and again, I just want to affect the lighter areas in the image. Gonna split this and it’s just affecting my highlights and I’m gonna change my blend mode. Overlay or soft light and it’s soft light. So now maybe I wanna make the shadows another color or a little bit darker maybe so I’m gonna create a new layer. And let’s choose this color here and I’m going to paint on the darker areas just in here, and double-click to bring up my Blend If options. So this time I wanna protect the shadows and have this effect that I just colored or painted only apply to the shadows. So again I’m just going to split alt, option. Split my slider and just bring it to something I like. Say OK. So that time I moved the slider on the right and it protected the highlights, and it allowed the effect from the layer above to only affect the shadows or the darker parts of the image. I’m gonna group these three layers, there’s before and there’s the after and I can change the opacity on this whole group if I wanna change, make it a little bit less intense. You never know what colors are gonna be in the sky but let’s move on to so more examples.

Use Blend If Tool To Sharpen In Shadows

In this next example, I wanna show you how you can use Blend If to sharpen in certain areas. Like, in this case, I just wanna sharpen the rocks and the rocks are darker than everywhere else so I’m actually going to be sharpening in the shadows. So I’m gonna make a copy of this layer, Command + J, and I am going to sharpen this layer with the Other, High Pass. And I’m going to keep radius spot 1.3, I want a lot of sharpening and I’m going to come down here to linear light, change my blend mode. And I’m gonna zoom in here so you see those rocks have a lot of sharpening. But then again, so does everything else, it sharpened the whole image. It sharpened the water. Sharpened the sky, maybe introduced some noise in the sky. And so, we’re gonna get rid of that. I’m gonna double-click. Now remember we have a layer here that we did a sharpening, and our slider here on the right-hand side is going to protect our lighter areas. So, all the sharpening that comes down is not going to be affected in the lighter areas and it’s gonna stay in the shadows. I’m gonna start by splitting my slider and bringing this over. And so now, let’s check this out. If I click on and off, I am just affecting my shadows or the rocks and I do not see sharpening in the water or anywhere else. You need the lighter areas. So, that is how we basically sharpened selectively in the shadows. Again, we brought over just the sliders and protected the lighter areas, and just this area right here and the underlying layer is where the sharpening is visible.

Blend If for Dodge And Burn

I’m going to add more highlights and shadows so let’s create a new layer and let’s start with the highlights. I’m gonna paint with white in the highlight areas here. And I’m not being particularly careful because Blend If is gonna take care of everything for us. And bring up the Blend If, double-click on the layer and we are going to come over here to the and protect the shadows. So, I’m gonna take this slider over to the right and I’m going to split the slider with the alt or option and adjust this ’til I see that I am liking it. And I’m gonna change the blend mode to soft light. And say OK. Now, that’s too much, I can just use my opacity and there we’ve increased the highlights. So let’s go for the shadows now. I’m gonna create a new layer. I’m going to change my brush so I paint with black and on that layer I’m going to paint black where there are shadows. And again, you don’t have to be super careful because you’ve got Blend If that’s gonna help you just make this black show up in the shadows. Double-click on the layer to bring up the layer style. And here we go, let’s go from the right side and we’re gonna protect the highlights this time. And I’m going to press alt or option and split the slider, and bring this over. I’m gonna change the blend mode to soft light. Bring the slider over some more. And say OK and you could see that I’ve changed some of those highlights and the shadows, so there’s the highlights. Here’s the shadow. If I need to change anything I might make that a little bit darker there. Say OK. Again, if I think that’s too much I can change my opacity on my shadow layer but there we go and I’m gonna group these two together, and here is the before, here’s the after. A great use of Blend If for dodge and burning.

Replace The Sky With Blend If

Okay, so now let’s have a little fun with this Blend If stuff. Let’s add some clouds to the sky here. I’m gonna make a new layer here or copy of the background layer. Command + J, I’m gonna turn this background layer off. We’re going to remove the blue out of the highlights. We’ve been using the underlying layer sliders but this one we’re going to use this layer which is the current layer that is highlighted. So we’re going to use the blue channel and we’re going to move the slider, and slowly but surely as we remove the blue from the highlights, the sky is gone. And as you can see there are other areas here that were selected and some of the highlights came out of there but we’re gonna take care of that later. Gonna say OK. Now let’s bring in the sky. I’ve got that right here. You can bring that in, there is our sky. Now we’re gonna do is we’re going to remove all the areas where we see the sky coming in through the background layer. Gonna make a copy of the background layer and I’m gonna put that above the sky layer and put a layer mask. Alt, option and click my layer mask. And now I’m gonna paint with white on that layer mask on the mountains. And so just like that, we used the Blend If to bring in a sky where we have a completely blue sky and now we have clouds.

What is blend if in Photoshop ?

The Blend If feature in Photoshop blends one layer into another based on the content of either of the two layers. It can be used, for example, to replace a sky by making it easy for you to knock out the blue sky without having to make a complex selection.

How do you use blend if ?

Step 1: Open Your Image In Photoshop And Add Some Text. …
Step 2: Access Photoshop’s Blending Options. …
Step 3: Drag The Black And White Sliders In Towards The Center To Blend The Layers. …
Step 4: Smooth Out The Blending By Splitting The Slider Bars In Two.