Forgive me if I'm not using the correct term, blend modes. {normal, hard light, luminosity,etc}

Is there a way to create one's own PS layer blend modes? So one could have the other nifty blend modes featured in Corel PhotoPaint or those from waaay back in Kai's Power Tools v2?

If you understand what the individual blend modes do, you can combine them in various ways for further control. Remember, though, that blend modes are all based on math using the pixel's tonal value, so you're not going to get more filter-like results such as textures, etc.

I was always curious about this, especially after adobe added "vivid" blend modes recently. Corel Photopaint seems to have a much wider selection of blend modes.

I confess I know little about the effect of modes: I cycle through them until I see the most desirable result. :)

how would I combine them? I thought it was a per-layer setting.


thanks for your reply!

It is a per-layer setting, but you can dupe the layer and stack them, and group them, and make sets of them, and apply even further settings on the set, and mask them, and... :)

Originally posted by Doug Nelson
stack them, and group them, and make sets of them,


might you have links to any tutorials on how to restrict either "blend modes" or "fill or adjustment layers" to specific: layers, groups, or sets?

noob that I am I always thought those were appled to all layers beneath, found them annoying, and hence rarely use them. :)


thanks again for your help

Restricting a blend mode to one layer is kind of futile, since what is it to blend with? As for restricting within sets, simply turn off "pass through" and nothing in that set (adjustment layers, blending modes, anything) will affect layers below that set. And then there's clipping masks, which can get kind of complex but are very handy. Your best bet is to search your PS helpfile for "pass through" and "clipping mask". It should have all the information you need.