Blending Modes

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Blending Modes Techniques

some of my frequently used blending modes techniques

Paint with Blending Modes

usually done mode with visibly strong effects

Vivid Light: easily create bright saturate strokes
Multiply, Color Burn: darken value
Subtract and Difference: create weird color and gray neutrality
Lighten/Darken: very versatile
- clean out sketch when overpainting
- edit light shape without affecting dark shape and vice versa

every blending modes can be utilized for the Dithering Techniques🌱

Misc Tips

Using a blending mode on a adjustment layer is equivalent to duplicate the content under it and set it to that blending mode.

Transparency Shapes Layer

when I was going through SAI settings, I discovered something in Photoshop called Transparency Shapes Layer (TSL).
- context: Photoshop layer has another slider called "Fill" that is separate from Opacity
  - Fill affects 8 Special Blending Modes where they reduce the intensity of the effects applied, rather than just decreasing the transparency of the effects.
  - video about Fill here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsk4bh4j3WQ
- the thing is, layer with TSL turned off brings that behaviour to the transparency of brushes
  - for example, let's take a airbrush with a 100% opacity in the center and fade to 0%
    - the 100% part will look like 100% Fill
    - the 50% part will look like 50% fill
    - and so on
    - video with timestamp here, but it's best to watch from the beginning: https://youtu.be/Yo5m-vMXfvw?t=250
- Shade, Shine, Shade/Shine in SAI is Linear Burn, Linear Dodge and Linear Light in Photoshop with TSL turned off. (Other special blend modes like Difference and Hard Mix in SAI work similarly)
  - that's why it maintains a beautiful gradient as you paint on it.
- Add (Glow) and Glow Dodge in CSP are the only ones with this behaviour.
  - Add (glow) might be Linear Light with TSL turned off
  - Glow Dodge might be Linear Dodge/Color Dodge with TSL turned off
  - now it would be nice if we have linear burn with TSL turned off too

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