Welcome back to another very exciting tutorial
here at The Photoshop Training Channel.com.
My name is Jesus Ramirez, and you can find
me on Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this tutorial I'm going to show you how
to use Blend If in Photoshop, like a pro.
With the techniques that you will learn in
this tutorial, you will be able to make fast
and easy sky replacements, apply textures
to text, create cool special effects, and
much more.
Blend If is truly one of Photoshop's unsung
heroes in an extremely powerful tool that
often gets overlooked.
Watch this tutorial all the way through, to
learn everything that you need to know about
Blend If.
And let me know in the comments what you think
about this amazing tool.
Okay, let's get started.
We're going to work with this graphic.
It's inside of this group, So, let me open
that up.
We have two layers.
We have this graphic, and this gray background.
This graphic is going to help us illustrate
how the Blend If works.
I'm going to double click to the side of the
layer to bring up the layer style window.
In the bottom center of the blending options,
you will see the Blend If section.
By default, it's set to gray.
But there's other options, which we'll discuss
later in this tutorial.
But first, let's focus on the gray.
There's really two main sections.
The, this layer section, and the underlying
section.
We're going to focus on the, this layer section,
but they both basically work the same.
Whatever is selected, and currently the black
and white layer is selected, is what the,
this layer will control.
Notice the black point here.
If I click and drag this to the right, watch
that happens to that circle.
It starts disappearing.
That's because I'm telling Photoshop that
anything that is this value of gray, 81, right
here, or darker, should be invisible.
And by the way, there's 256 levels of gray
from zero, to 255.
Zero being black, and 255 being white.
And I can bring it all the way to the other
side, where the only visible pixels are the
white pixels.
I can do the same thing for the white point,
I can click and drag that to the left.
Now I'm telling Photoshop that anything that
is 169, which is this level of gray, all the
way to white, which is at 255, should be invisible.
So, I'm using luminosity to blend layers.
One important thing to note, is that if you
click and drag this, and you want to make
a smoother transition So, that you don't have
a sharp line, you can hold Alt Option on the
Mac, and click on the point to split it in
half.
If you spread it apart, you'll create a much
smoother transition as you see there.
So, now, anything that is between 55 and 120
will gradually become transparent.
With this information we can go back into
our layers here, and I have an example for
you, which is this text, which reads, "Clouds,"
and a background of a sky.
So, we wanted to create an effect where the
clouds were covering the text, we can use
Blend If for that, to make life much easier.
So, I'm going to double click to the side
of the layer, to bring up the layer style
window.
We're going to now work on the underlying
layer.
That's all the layers below the currently
selected layer.
We want the white pixels to come through,
not the dark ones.
If we select the dark ones, you'll notice
that the blue, which is darker than the white,
is going to come through, and that's not what
I want.
I want to show the brighter pixels, which
are the clouds.
I can click and drag this white point to the
left, then hold Alt Option on the Mac, click
to split this in half, and create a much smoother
transition.
And I can fine tune those, then press okay.
Now it looks as if that text is being covered
by the clouds.
Really cool stuff, right?
I'm sure that you're getting a lot of ideas
of how to use this, So, if you come up with
a good one, let me know in the comments.
This is an easy way of creating blends, and
masking in Photoshop.
I'm going to collapse this group, and then
move on to another example.
We have this texture, and this text that reads,
"Rust.
" I'm going to select the texture layer, then
press Ctrl Alt G, Command Option G on the
Mac, to turn that into a clipping mask.
That means that the text layer controls the
visibility of the textural layer.
So, I can click and drag the texture, and
place it accordingly.
Then if I want to blend the texture with the
text layer, I can use the same technique.
I'm going to double click to the side of the
layer to bring up the layer style window.
Looking at the texture layer, we have dark
pixels, and bright pixels.
If I want to hide the black pixels, I can
click on this point and drag to the right
and notice how the darker pixels start disappearing.
I can also, hold Alt Option on the Mac, click
to split those in half, and just create a
smoother transition.
I could also, do the opposite.
I can hide the brighter pixels, which is this
top part.
So, I can click on the white point and drag
it to the left, and also, hold Alt Option
on the Mac and split those in half to create
a smoother transition, and press okay when
I'm done.
And this is a live text layer, which means
that I can press T for the type tool, then
click, and change the contents.
So, I can type, "PTC," and that keeps the
same effect.
Now, I have one more example here for you,
this one deals with color.
So, now we're going to talk about the channels
that you can blend in the Blend If.
We have the color wheel here, and a gray background.
If I double click to the side of the layer
of the color wheel, it will bring up the layer
style window.
I can click on this drop down to select red.
So, we have black, and we have red.
And this is a red channel by the way.
So, what we can do here is click and drag
this white point, which is a red point, and
move it to the left.
That means that we're going to hide red pixels.
See how it immediately made all those red
pixels transparent?
And I can keep dragging those to the left,
up until we get to the opposite end.
The opposite of red is cyan, So, those are
the colors that we keep.
I can do the opposite, and click and drag
the black point, which will be the opposite
of red.
In this case, cyan.
And it will hide those pixels.
And just like we did before, we can hold Alt
Option on the Mac, click, and split those
in half, and create smoother transitions between
visible, and invisible pixels.
And, I'll quickly show you what green does.
We can hide green, the opposite of green is
magenta, and that's where it stops.
Or we can hide magenta and stop at green.
Finally, we have blue.
The opposite of blue is yellow, So, that's
where it will stop.
And I can hide yellow pixels and stop at blue.
And to briefly explain how all this works,
I'm going to go into the channels panel, and
what the Blend If sliders are really doing
is using channels to create those blends.
If you look at the red channel, notice that
on the top part where we have red, it's completely
white.
And on the bottom part we have black, where
cyan is.
So, when you're dragging the black and white
points in Blend If, this is what it's referencing.
The green channel, the green area is white.
The opposite, magenta is black.
The blue channel, blue is white, yellow is
the opposite, and it's in black.
I know that the channels panel can be confusing
for beginners, but I wanted to show you how
this relationship works.
So, it's simply a way of blending pixels using
channels.
I'm going to click on RGB, go back into the
layers panel, So, now we're going to take
that information and apply it to this image.
What we want to do here, is replace the sky
with that sky there.
But notice that this will be a complicated
mask to create.
We have a bunch of trees, and we have birds,
and what you might have seen in Some tutorials
it that you can create layer masks from the
blue channel, and then use this to mask that
out, which certainly will work.
But in my opinion, it might take a little
too long.
So, instead, we'll use Blend If, and it will
use that same blue channel anyway.
So, I'm going to go back into the layers panel,
then double click to the side of the trees
layers to bring up the layer style window.
And we have to think of the color that we're
trying to make transparent.
So, if we're doing a sky replacement, we want
to make blue transparent.
So, I'm going to go into the blue channel
in the Blend If dropdown and hide the blue
from this layer.
And notice that as I do that, the underlying
layer immediately comes through, and we're
done masking.
The one thing that I will do is hold Alt Option
on the Mac, split those two in half to create
smoother transitions, then press okay.
So, just like that, almost as magic, we were
able to replace the sky.
I can also, click and drag on the underlying
layer to reposition it, and the blend updates
automatically.
There's nothing I need to do.
And keep in mind that in Some cases, you will
need to adjust other channels as well.
If this is a new technique for you, let me
know in the comments, and don't forget to
click on subscribe and the notification button,
if this is your first time here at The Photoshop
Training Channel.
And that's it for this tutorial.
I hope that you enjoyed it, and that you learned
Something new.
If you found this tutorial useful, don't forget
to share it with a friend.
Thank you So, much for watching, and I will
talk to you again Soon.
