Oh my, have I had fun. After reading an article by Sharon Carvalho in Quilting Arts magazine, I started playing with blending layers in Photoshop Elements. First, I selected three images for experimentation. My bottom layer was the result of a painting experiment.
Next came a layer of messy text. Although it seems to be written on a white background, the background is actually transparent.
For the top layer, I used a snippet of another painted sampler.
Then, I just started trying out many different types of blends, as selected on the layers drop down window/menu. (My PSE is version 7, which is quite old. I believe more up to date versions call this Blending Mode.)
And just look what happened! “Hue” completely changed – and amped up – the colors.
“Soft light” played up totally different features. The colors are more expected but the large circle has almost disappeared.
“Screen” produced a sort of soft neon effect.
Check out “multiply”. It seems to have stirred the colors together, getting mostly mud.
“Lighter” played up the lighter elements and completly omitted the darker ones.
“Exclusion” resulted in dramatically duller colors.
But, check out “difference,” which created very unexpected colors and turned the text different colors. Pretty cool , right?
“Color burn” produced another color surprise. Suddenly, there was a stack of horizontal lines on the right. Had you noticed those before?
The “luminosity” selection merged the colors and almost completely hid the text. It was one of the few effects that showed the squiggly black line.
Gee, this was fun! Now, what am I planning to do with these images? Honestly, probably nothing. But, they were just so much stinking fun that I’ll definitely have to play like this again. The author of the article I read prints her results to fabric and uses them in her quilts. That’s rather pricey, of course. What if I printed one pretty large (online) and made it into a whole cloth quilt? And maybe added some interesting hand and machine stitching? Now THAT sounds like fun. I’m almost giggly at the thought.
What wackado crazy effects do you like in Photoshop Elements?
Ellen Lindner