Screen Blending
screen blending is just like regular blending, only you use a different blend mode instead of lowering the opacity. screen blending is ideal for black/darker images, like concert photos i have here.
i have picked out my images below, mostly darker ones since they're most appropriate for screen blending:
i am going to make an 800 by 600 black canvas to start my blend. now like all blends, you are going to choose your first image in the blend to work with. here's mine:
now like in normal blending, you will use gradients to put the image into the background. you can get to the gradient tool by right clicking the paintbucket and clicking on the colored rectangle. the only color we will be using is black, so set your foreground to black.
To use the gradient tool properly for blends, you'll have to put it on the correct settings. After choosing your gradient tool, go to the top left of your window and you'll see this bar (click to see it)
Look at this section on your bar and double click the drop down menu with the gradient thumbnail:
A gradient editor menu will show up, you can edit your colors if you haven't already, but choose the second
thumbnail, called foreground to transparent:
Now be sure that on the top gradient bar menu that you have transparency checked off:
Blending
So for my first image, I gradient the bottom side and the right side (since this image goes in the top left hand corner) like so:
now paste the image into your black canvas. after that, you'll want to go to your layers window and you'll see a drop down menu that says "normal". Choose Screen from the menu
you shouldn't see much of a difference quite yet, but you'll be seeing changes very soon. Now go to the rest of your images and repeat this process until all images are done with like i've shown below:
Just put the appropriate gradients on all of your images, paste them onto your canvas and choose screen. Rearrange your images if you like. You will see that all black is eliminated from your images and is automatically blended straight into the canvas, getting rid of black edges and smoothly flows from one image to the next.
Sometimes images will overlap each other like the example below. in the middle of the image, you'll see faces piled on top of each other:
if you think that's cool looking, don't mess with it, but if you want to get rid of it, set your gradient to black and drag it across the image until the desired area is gone.
notice how the middle area is now clear of the extra faces. if you ever want to "erase" something from an image, just use your gradient tool to eliminate anything extra.
Here is my completed blend:
As you can see, working with screen blending takes a lot less effort than regular blending. you don't have to erase edges or anything like that or blur one image into the next. The screen mode automatically eliminates all black from an image to blend into a dark background.
screen blending works with dark colors, but not necessarily black. when you're finished with the blend, you can go back to your first layer/background layer and change the colors to whatever you want afterwards:
like blue:
or purple:
or green:
the choices are endless. apply other basic blending skills such as texturizing, colorizing, or patterns to enhance your image.
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