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In the Layer Style dialog box, up near the top,
is the under-utilized Blending Options. Learning the basics of
layer blending can take your images to the next level, and save
you quite a bit of time with certain jobs.
In this basic look at the simple (yet somewhat
daunting) dialog box and the layer blending options, we'll show
you the basic controls and options. First, let's look at the
dialog box.
To the left is a list of the Layer Style dialog
box panels. Clicking on Blending Options opens the panel shown.
To the right are the standard buttons and the Layer Style
preview button. The middle section contains the options
themselves.
In the General Blending section, you'll see the
Blend Mode and the Opacity slider. Changes made here are
immediately reflected in the Layers palette, and changes made to
blending mode and opacity in the Layers palette are shown here.
The Advanced Blending section holds some
incredibly powerful tools.
• Fill Opacity: This slider allows you to
reduce the opacity of the content of a layer without reducing
the opacity of effects applied to the layer. Drop shadows,
bevels, and several other effects retain the layer's general
opacity (set in General Blending or the Layers palette).
In the Layers palette, you'll see that the heart
shape (at the top of the layers palette) is actually a shape
layer with effects applied. If no effects were applied and the
blending options were set to the defaults, a larger, flat,
boring red heart would appear. However, a stroke has been
applied, as well as a bevel and a drop shadow.
Below, in the Layer Style dialog box, you can
see that the Fill Opacity has been reduced. This affects only
the heart's red fill, not the beveled stroke. (If we wanted the
stroke to be transparent as well, we would use the opacity
slider in the general Blending area or the Layers palette.)
• Channels: You can choose to blend all
channels, or specific channels.
• Knockout: The specified layer will be used to hide the
underlying layers. (Sort of a reverse layer clipping mask.) The
choices are None, Shallow, and Deep. If None is selected, there
is no knockout. When you choose Shallow, the layer's pixels will
knock out underlying pixels of layers in that same layer set. If
there is no layer set, the knockout extends downward in the
layers until either it hits a background layer or reaches
transparency. In the following image, notice that the heart has
been moved into Layer Set 1, with the type layers. With Knockout
set to Shallow, the heart knocks out all of the layers in the
set, but only the layers in the set.
With Knockout set to Deep, as shown below, the
knockout goes all the way to the Background layer (or, if no
background layer, all the way to transparency). Note, however,
that Set 1's blending mode is Pass Through in the Layer's
palette. When the layer set's blending mode is any other, the
knockout stops at the bottom of the layer set, even when Deep is
selected for a specific layer.
In addition to layer sets, knockout can be
affected by clipping groups.
• Blend Interior Effects as Group: When selected, any layer
effect that ranges inside the actual artwork on the layer (Inner
Glow, Satin, Overlay) is blended with the artwork before the
artwork is blended with the rest of the layers.
• Blend Clipped Layers as Group: Layers within the selected
layer's clipping group (if any) will be blended together before
they are blended with other layers.
• Blend If: When Gray is selected, all channels are blended
using each pixel's luminosity or brightness value.
Alternatively, you can choose to blend the color channels
individually.
The sliders control what pixels blend, and how
much, between layers. In this figure, the upper layer (golden
chains) is active and the upper slider is set to exclude the
lighter pixels on that layer. Using the Gray option, the
lightness values of each pixel is evaluated. As shown, any pixel
on the upper layer with a brightness of more than 200 will not
be blended, and therefore will be rendered invisible.
By holding down the Option/Alt key, we can split
the sliders to define a range of partially-blended pixels. This
creates a smoother blending.
In addition to the value shown above for Gray,
we could also blend the individual channels. (This does not
affect the slider positions for Gray.) If we adjust the
underlying image to force blue to blend, areas with blue pixels
in the lower layer will show through the upper layer, as shown
here.
You can even drag the light and dark sliders
past each other to create fantastic blends. In this example, we
achieve the desired effect of “ghostly golden chains” by
reversing the sliders.
Reversing the sliders for the heart layer also
changes the look of the underlying pattern in Hippie Haven's
final version.
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