Absolute Beginner's Guide to Digital Photography

CHAPTER 16 THE IMPORTANCE OF LAYERS AND MASKS 239

The Layer Style dialog box in Photoshop includes many effects. The General

Blending mode is often the most important effect; it enables you to make the

image in the layer opaque or semitransparent. The Opacity slider in Elements

provides the same effect.

5. Slide the Opacity slider down to 50% and then click OK. Notice the Opacity
   value changed in the palette. You can access Opacity in either place.


6. Re-open the Layer Style dialog box and experiment with the Blend If section
   under Advanced Blending. This feature is only available in Photoshop, but
   similar capabilities are possible in Elements by changing Normal in the
   Layers palette to Darken, Lighten, Color Dodge, or Color Burn. This depends
   entirely on the colors in the background image, so your results may vary.

The Blend If section enables you to make parts of the layer transparent while leav-

ing the remainder opaque. For example, Blend If lets you make only the lightest pix-

els of the layer opaque. Wherever its pixels are dark, they are made transparent and

the underlying image shows through. Blend If also permits separate opacity effects

for each primary color.

Harmonizing the Elements of a Collage

When images are pasted into other images, they often clash with their new sur-

roundings (see Figure 16.5). Something about them looks wrong. If realism is your

goal, an image blended into a background must match the background in several

ways.

FIGURE 16.5
Two layers clash
with their back-
ground.