Thursday, December 31, 2009

How To Cycle Quickly Between Blend Modes in Photoshop

pine trees






I have a hard time remembering what each of the blend mode effects look like so I used to keep going up to the blend mode drop down box to press buttons until I found the desired effect. There's a nice shortcut.

tree bark



I'm starting with a photo of some evergreens in the woods and a photo of tree bark which you can see in the layers palette.

Press the v key to ensure the move tool is active.

Hold shift + to move forward or shift - to move backward

screen shot layers panel
screen shot layers panel
tree bark blended with pine branches
























Voila! The woods are blended with tree bark using hard light. This is at 100% opacity but you can press the little down facing arrow (this brings up a slider) and the opacity slider can be easily adjusted for additional variation.

The same shortcut applies to the blending mode for paint brushes but you press b instead of v.

A quick way to change the opacity is press numbers on the keyboard. 5 would be 50%, 1 would be 10%, etc.

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