Blending Options within Glow

 

During the Topaz Webinar on Tuesday I showed quite a bit of information.  After the webinar my head was spinning, it felt like an hour went by in 5 minutes!  Sorry if you got sucked into my whirlwind of tips and tricks and spit out without a clue (I felt the same way in the end).   Luckily, you have the PDF with the Workflows and the settings on the Webinar page!

The main thing I wanted everyone to take away from the webinar session was to not look at Glow so literally.  Glow, in its most basic form is a fractal art generator, however, it is capable of SO much more with the power of blending options.

In this tutorial I will be taking a closer look at Glow with specific attention placed on the 2 heavy hitting blending options, Screen and Soft Light in reference to Glow:

Screen

The Screen Blend Mode makes anything Black on the top layer disappear, showing the bottom layer below it.  This is critical to making some really interesting images with the “Neon” Presets in Glow.  Try this:

  1. Duplicate your background layer
  2. Open Topaz Glow
  3. Select any “Neon” preset
  4. Change the blend mode to Screen
  5. Now you can adjust the neon colors in the Color section and reduce the saturation to zero to allow for really nice highlight effects.

Soft Light

The Soft Light Blending Mode makes anything above 50% grey in the photo slightly darker and more contrasty, likewise anything under 50% grey will become lighter.  Try this:

  1. Duplicate your background layer
  2. Open Topaz Glow
  3. Select the ‘Soft Bloom I’ preset in the ‘Afterglow’ section.
  4. Change the Blending Option to Soft Light
  5. Now you can adjust the color cast in the Color section by reducing the saturation.  This will only effect the tone in the image rather than the color.

Check out the Tutorial for more information and a demonstration of the tips above!

Purchase Topaz Glow



Like the style of this tutorial?  You will LOVE HDR Insider!  Full Length HDR Workflows, Critiques & More!

Insider Logo cut Ad with Join Button


 [hcshort id=”5″]


Blake Rudis
f.64 Academy and f.64 Elite are the brainchildren of Blake Rudis. While he is a landscape photographer, he is most passionate about post-processing images in Photoshop and mentoring others.

For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
Blake Rudis on EmailBlake Rudis on FacebookBlake Rudis on InstagramBlake Rudis on PinterestBlake Rudis on TwitterBlake Rudis on Youtube