You can control how Elements blends the color you add to an image with the colors that are already there. This section takes a look at two different blending methods: using blend modes to determine how the colors you paint change what’s already in your image, and using the Smudge tool to mix parts of your image together.
Blend modes are almost limitless in the ways they can manipulate images. They control how the color you add when painting reacts with the existing pixels in an image—whether you just add color (Normal mode), make the existing color darker (Multiply mode), or change the saturation (Saturation mode).
Image-editing experts have found plenty of clever ways to use blend modes for some really sophisticated techniques. Thorough coverage of these techniques would turn this into a book the size of the Yellow Pages, but Figure 12-15 shows a few examples of how simply changing a brush’s blend mode can radically alter your results.
Elements groups the blend modes according to the effects they have. You won’t always see every group or all the choices, but generally speaking, in Elements menus (such as the Options bar’s Mode menu for the Brush tool) the top group includes what you might call “painting modes,” followed by modes for darkening, lightening, adjusting light, applying special effects, and adjusting color.
Keep in mind that the modes sometimes work quite differently with layers than with tools. In other words, painting with a brush in Dissolve mode may produce an effect quite different than creating a layer in Dissolve mode and painting on it.
There are so many ways to combine blend modes that even Elements pros can’t always predict the results, so experimenting is the best way to learn about them. They’re really cool and useful once you get used to them, but if you’re just starting out in Elements, there’s no need to worry about them right away.
Figure 12-15. This photo shows the effect of some of the different blend modes when used with the Brush tool. The same color was used for each of the vertical stripes—you can see how different the result is from just changing the mode. From left to right, the modes are Normal, Color Burn, Color Dodge, Vivid Light, Difference, and Saturation.
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If you’d like to learn more about how each mode works, you can find a lot of useful tutorials on the Web. A good place to start is www.photoshopgurus.com/tutorials/t010.html. (Ignore the section “Additional blend mode information”—that’s only for Photoshop folks.)
Figure 12-16. Here’s the little boy from Figure 12-13 again, this time after a dose of Overlay blending, as described in the box above. Unlike the results of using the Dodge and Burn tools (Figure 12-14), the color isn’t grayish, but the contrast where shadowed areas meet bright ones still needs some work.
The Smudge tool does just what you’d think: You can use it to smear the colors in your image as if you were rubbing them with your finger. You can even “finger paint” with it, if you feel the call of your inner preschooler. Adobe describes the effect of the Smudge tool as being “like a finger dragged through wet paint.” It’s sort of like a cousin to the Liquify filter (Applying the Liquify Filter to Text), but with fewer options.
If you want to turn your photos into paintings (as in Figure 12-17), the humble Smudge tool is your most valuable resource. For really artistic smudging, you need a graphics tablet so you can vary the stroke pressure. (You can use this tool without a tablet, but you won’t get nearly as good an effect.) To learn more about this kind of smudging, you can find some excellent tutorials in the Retouching forum at Digital Photography Review (www.dpreview.com; search for smudging). The forums at www.retouchpro.com are also a favorite hangout of expert smudgers.
Figure 12-17. With the help of a graphics tablet, you can join the ranks of the many skilled smudgers who create amazing effects using only this tool. The bottom three petals of this hibiscus blossom show preliminary smudging. The brushes you use determine whether the effect is smooth, as you see here, or more heavily stroked. When you want to blend in other colors, use the Finger Painting option. In effect, the Smudge tool lets you turn your photo into a painting.
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Scott Deardorff is one of the most talented smudgers out there. If you’re serious about smudging, check out his DVDs and online training at http://deardorfftraining.com. His blog there includes a lot of great free tips on smudging techniques, too. Visit his website at www.scottdeardorffportraits.com to see some outstanding examples of what skilled hands can accomplish with the humble Smudge tool.
A warning: If you have a slow computer, there will be quite a bit of lag between when you apply the Smudge tool and when you see its effect onscreen. This delay makes the tool tricky to control, because you have to resist the temptation to keep going over an area until you see results.
You’ll find the Smudge tool hidden under the Blur tool in the Tools panel. Click the Blur tool or press R and, from the pop-out menu, choose the Smudge tool (its icon, not surprisingly, is a finger that looks like it’s painting).
The Smudge tool has mostly the same Options bar settings as a regular brush, but it also includes the Sample All Layers checkbox, just like the Healing brush and the Clone Stamp, as well as two additional settings:
Strength. This setting means just what it says—it controls how much the tool smudges the colors together. A higher number results in more blending.
Finger Painting. Turning on this checkbox makes the Smudge tool smear in the Foreground color at the start of each stroke. When this box is turned off, the tool uses the color that’s under the cursor at the start of each stroke. (Figure 12-18 shows the difference.) This option is useful for creating artistic smudges. If you want a bit of a contrasting color to help your strokes stand out more, choose a Foreground color and turn this checkbox on.
Figure 12-18. The strokes on the left were done with the Smudge tool’s Finger Painting checkbox turned on, which lets you introduce a bit of the Foreground color (orange, in this case) into the beginning of each stroke. This technique is really useful for shading and when you need to mix in just a touch of another color. The smudging on the right was done with Finger Painting turned off, so it uses only the colors that are already in the image.
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Use the Eyedropper (The Eyedropper Tool) to sample parts of your image to add Finger Painting colors that harmonize well with the area you’re smudging.