STACK MODES IN SMART
OBJECTS & STATISTICS
Stack modes in smart objects (Layer>Smart Objects>
Stack Mode) and Statistics (File>Scripts>Statistics) are
typically used for technical image processing, where the
brightness, color, size, and relative motion of elements
in an image are important to understand and visualize.
When using stack modes with a smart object, each lay-
er’s content inside the smart object is compared with
every other layer and combined in some way. With Sta-
tistics, you choose the files that you want Photoshop to
open in an image stack, as well as the stack mode you
want applied to those layers.
Stack modes are similar to blend modes, but they
work equally across all elements in the stack. These
modes also ignore opacity gradients, and only work
on actual non-transparent pixel content. That meansHEADSHOT IMAGES © ADOBE STOCK