Project 10: Blending Modes.

In this project you're asked to look at using Blending Modes to combine two different shots to create a single new image. The first thing that i did was open the image of the two pelicans because before i could do anything else i needed to seperate and copy the birds from the rest of the photo. The way i did this was to first to use the Magic Wand tool and select the blue background around the birds then i went to SELECT>INVERSE which has the effect of reversing your selection so now instead of just having the background highlighted i now have just the birds. The problem with this process is that when you copy areas like this they tend to look very angular and un-natural so to solve this i used SELECT>MODIFY>FEATHER and set it to one pixel, what this does is contract the selected area and soften all the edges making it appear more normal. Finally all i needed to do was copy the area i now had highlighted and then paste it onto the second image provided in the course material of a sky at sunset or sunrise and i had my two layers to work with in the blending modes. Below are the images i created.

Normal.

Dissolve.

Darken.

Multiply.

Colour Burn.

Linear Burn.

Lighten.

Screen.

Colour Dodge.

Linear Dodge.

Overlay.

Soft Light.

Hard Light.

Vivid Light.

Linear Light.

Pin Light.

Difference.

Exclusion.

Hue.

Saturation.

Colour.

Luminosity.

By going through this process i have to agree with what is said in the course that alot of these aren't that suitable for photography but the one that I'd most lightly use in my own work would be normal, multiply, screen, hard light,difference and luminosity because these produce the best effects in my opinion.

I did have one problem with this project in that i could get the modes to work on the top layer containing the birds but to begin with i could get the same results on the background layer. After consulting my tutor i soon resolved this problem because he explained that i should have duplicated the background layer so i could add the blending mode to it, quite straight forward in the end but you have to ask why this process wasn't explain more clearly in the course material? I know it's a level 2 course and by now i should have a reasonable understanding of the software but sometimes i do feel the author takes certain things for granted which he may have covered in other course which i haven't done, maybe it's just me but that's how i feel.