How To Merge Overlay Layers In Photoshop

One of the best things about Adobe Photoshop is the ability to work in layers. This allows you to take maximum control and work not-destructively.

Layers offer different ways to interact with each other and this is done through blend modes. One of the well-nigh common uses for this is photo compositing using two images or more.

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In that location are many unlike methods for how to alloy layers in Photoshop. In this article, I'll go through three of them that should help y'all out in a wide variety of situations.

(You tin can also bank check how to merge images using Photoshop here.)

So load up your version of Photoshop and follow along with the steps beneath to create a unique multiple exposure event.

How to Blend Images Together with Photoshop

Let's have a wait at three of the most useful means to blend images together, as presented in the above video courtesy of Photoshop Essentials.

Each one will give you dissimilar results and will present different challenges. I'll walk y'all through all 3 and so you tin use the method that suits you best, or you can use all three of them when you're working on more complex blended photography ideas.

For all of them, you lot're going to be working in the Layers panel. If this is not visible, you can enable it in the bill of fare Window, Layers.

Then, you'll need to have the two images together in the same document. In that location are a number of means to exercise this:

Yous can drag the image from 1 window to the other; y'all can employ the Copy and Paste commands from the Edit carte or their respective keyboard shortcuts Cmd + C and Cmd + V; or you can utilize the Place Embedded control.

There's no right or wrong way to practise information technology, choose the one that you feel more than comfortable with.

Now let's get started.

Option i: Use Photoshop Layer Opacity

Stride 1: Choose your images

Tutorial for how to blend on Photoshop layers.

Credit: Viktor Talashuk

Using photoshop blend modes in your workflow

Credit: Aleksandr ledogorov

This way of layering photos will give you the consequence of a double-exposure. That's why you should cull two images that tin give y'all a harmonic result.

Step 2: Open the two images every bit layers in Photoshop

When you have two images open in the same document in Photoshop, past default you lot'll but see the top layer because of the blend mode. But that doesn't mean that the second i isn't in that location.

Go to the Layers panel and see how you have ii layers – one property each photo. You'll exist able to see them every bit thumbnails and then you lot can recognize them.

The acme image is currently blocking the background layer. Try clicking on the eye icon adjacent to information technology enable/disable it.

If yous disable it, you'll be able to run across the prototype on the lesser layer. If you click on information technology once again, you'll make the top motion-picture show visible.

Step 3: Change the layer opacity

Adobe Photoshop tips for using layer opacity for blend effects.

Make sure you're working on the top image by clicking on it to select it. So open the Opacity slider located at the top of the Layers panel by clicking on the down arrow adjacent to it.

You can at present slide it to lower the opacity. As y'all do this, the lesser image volition offset to appear and interact with the agile layer.

Move information technology slowly to discover the right amount. You tin can also type the specific number, for example, 70 volition prepare it at seventy% opacity.

Notation that the order of the layers makes a deviation in the result. You can so apply the move tool to adapt a particular composition using the 2 images.

You can besides turn on the guides in Photoshop to make sure everything is lined up OK.

Option ii: Use Photoshop Layer Blend Modes

Step 1: Chose your images

Sample image of flowers for using blend modes in Photoshop

Credit: Hassan Pasha

Texture can be used to layer an image in Photoshop using blend modes

Credit: Pawel Czerwinski

This blend mode is most commonly used to add texture to your images, which is what I'1000 going to be showing y'all in the post-obit case.

Nevertheless, yous can also employ it to control aligning layers or to blend more than two images, because you tin can apply a dissimilar alloy mode to each layer.

Step 2: Open both images

Open up your ii images together in one certificate. Brand sure that the texture is in the top layer. Yous tin can see and modify this in the Layers panel.

Both images should be of the aforementioned size. If they aren't, adjust the size past going to the card Edit, Transform, or using the keyboard shortcut Cmd + T.

Pace 3: Alter the Blending Style

You can experiment with the different variations given by blend modes in Photoshop.
On top of the Layers panel, next to the Opacity slider, you'll find the blending mode of your layer. By default, information technology's set to Normal, which means that the layer is non interacting with anything beneath information technology.

If you click on the down arrow, you'll open the Blend Fashion menu. If you lot're using Photoshop CS6 yous won't be able to see a preview of the event, so you'll have to utilize each one of the layer blending modes to see the effect.

On newer CC versions you can just hover over the unlike alloy modes to see how your prototype changes with each of them.

In the panel, you'll encounter how the blending modes are divided into groups separated by a thin line. The first block contains the alloy modes that will darken your image through interactions.

Next, there'south the group of layer alloy modes that lightens the epitome. After that, yous'll observe the ones that will change the contrast, and so on. This is designed for you to cull the blending modes more intuitively.

Each of these blend modes will change the mode in which the pixels from the top layer collaborate with the pixels from the layer underneath.

Hither's a brief explanation of the different layer blend modes:

Normal (Shift + Selection + N): At that place's no interaction betwixt layers, so yous'll just run into the elevation image.
Dissolve (Shift + Option + I): This blend manner favors the top layer's pixels when the opacity has a high value, and the bottom pixels when the opacity is low. It also applies a dither design.
Darken (Shift + Option + Thou): The lighter pixels are replaced by the darker ones.
Multiply (Shift + Option + Chiliad): This blend manner multiplies the base color by the alloy colour, which of course will result in a darker color. It's the most unremarkably used in this group.
Color Burn (Shift + Selection + B): The issue is much darker than whatever yous would get with Multiply. This blend mode volition effect in a very saturated image with an increase in contrast. Information technology makes no difference when the blending color is white.
Linear Burn (Shift + Pick + A): Like to the Colour Fire except that it decreases the lightness then the saturation isn't and so farthermost.
Darker Colour: This works like Darken but it doesn't practise it in dissever channels.
Lighten (Shift + Option + G): This blend mode is the opposite of Darken. It keeps the lighter colors from the tiptop layer and the darker ones get replaced by the lighter ones from the bottom layer.
Screen (Shift + Option + S): If you're blending with blackness you lot won't see any change. If you blend with white, then the colors in your image turn white. The other colors get brighter and less contrasting. It's the contrary of Multiply.
Colour Contrivance (Shift + Option + D): This alloy mode creates saturation and contrast. The result is much lighter than Screen or Lighten and very often it blows out the highlights.
Linear Dodge (Shift + Option + West): This is brighter than Colour Dodge but is less saturated.
Lighter Color: This works similar Lighten mode but only on ane channel instead of three.
Overlay (Shift + Option + O): This is probably the most commonly used out of all the blending modes because it'southward a moderate combination of the Screen and Multiply modes. It does this according to the base color; this way, information technology applies Screen manner to the lighter colors and Multiply manner to the darker ones.
Soft Low-cal (Shift + Pick + F): This blend style is very like to the Overlay way simply softer.
Hard Low-cal (Shift + Option + H): This creates more contrasting images. Imagine that you cast a hard light onto your paradigm, hence the name. The highlights will become more bright and the shadows volition become darker.
Brilliant Lite (Shift + Selection + V): Dodges and burns the colour according to the blend color. The result is very intense.
Linear Low-cal (Shift + Pick + J): This works similarly to the Brilliant Light blend mode, except that it affects the brightness instead of the dissimilarity.
Pivot Light (Shift + Option + Z): The issue here depends on the alloy colors. If the pixels on the pinnacle layer are darker they'll remain, if they're lighter than the ones underneath, they'll be replaced. It applies the same logic to the lighter pixels. The resulting blend is high dissimilarity with very piffling mid-tones.
Difficult Mix (Shift + Selection + L): With this blend mode, the channel values will go either 0 or 255. As a result, the colors are but crimson, green, bluish, white, and blackness if y'all're working in RGB mode. For images in CMYK the colors are white, black, cyan, magenta and yellow.
Difference (Shift + Choice + Due east): Evaluates the brightness value of each pixel and it so subtracts the base color or the blend colour depending on which was brighter.
Exclusion (Shift + Option + Ten): This is virtually like Difference but offers a less contrasting result.
Subtract: Subtracts the blend color from the base color, and then like colors cancel each other.
Divide: The process here is similar to Subtract but instead of subtracting the color, it divides it. This will give a very contrasted prototype with diddled-out highlights.
Hue (Shift + Option + U): This blend fashion keeps the hue as it is and blends the luminance and saturation.
Saturation (Shift + Option + T): Preserves the saturation while blending the hue and luminance.
Color (Shift + Option + C): Keeps the color of the layer with a blend of the hue and saturation.
Luminosity (Shift + Choice + Y): Preserves the luminosity and blends the rest of the values.

I know this all looks very complicated because the blend modes are still an abstruse idea, but as you alloy ii images together and see the changes applied, it will all start to brand sense.

That'southward why implementing the preview mode was a very appreciated upgrade in the newer versions of Photoshop. The more you use layer blending modes, the easier this will become, and yous'll be picking the right one faster and more intuitively.

Step four: Change the Opacity (optional)

Use the opacity slider to change layer parameters in Photoshop

Fifty-fifty if you lot're using the layer alloy modes, you lot can besides combine them with other methods for a more precise result.

For instance, you can as well modify the opacity. If you've found the correct blending mode only you feel the result is too intense, just lower the opacity to reach a more moderate effect.

Go on in listen that some blending modes react differently to the Opacity values than the Fill Opacity values. So, if you're working with whatever of these, you lot can try both sliders to run across which works better for y'all.

These alloy modes are Color Burn, Linear Burn down, Color Dodge, Linear Dodge, Vivid Light, Linear Light, Difficult Mix, and Divergence.

(You lot tin can as well bank check our article on dodge and burn here.)

Choice 3: Use Photoshop Layer Mask

Stride 1: Choose your images

Using a layer mask - Photoshop tutorials

Credit: Jeremy Bishop

Steps for using layer mask technique to layer content in Photoshop

Credit: Sergio Rios

In this method for mixing Photoshop layers, yous have more than freedom to choose the two images that you're going to blend. This is because using a layer mask allows yous to work with simply sections of each image.

They tin can also have different sizes. That's why the layer mask method is all-time for artistic composites.

Pace ii: Open up your images

Open the two images in Photoshop. Depending on the photographs that you're using and the effect that yous're after, having them as Smart Objects might be useful.

To do this you lot can open up the second image via the Place Embedded command. This will open the second image on a split layer and automatically brand information technology a Smart Object.

If y'all used a different fashion, for example, Copy and Paste, then yous can plow information technology into a Smart Object by correct-clicking on the layer and choosing Convert to Smart Object on the menu.

Step 3: Arrange the images

Photoshop - mixing an image with another but keeping background colors using a layer mask.

I recommended you lot utilise Smart Objects because you tin manipulate the layer as you desire without it losing the original information.

So, you tin can shrink information technology downwards or transform it then modify your listen and make information technology big again without information technology losing quality.

In this case, I'chiliad not going to modify anything from this new layer, but I do need to place it in the correct position so that the horizon matches in both images. I tin can easily practice this using the motility tool.

Footstep 4: Add a layer mask

Layer masks can make visible or invisible different parts of a layer without you losing any pixels. They can also add unlike grades of transparency. This is why they're such an essential tool for compositing in Photoshop.

You can create a New Layer Mask using the button at the bottom of the Layers panel. Brand sure that yous're in the right layer before applying it.

By default, layer masks will exist fully white, which ways that you won't see any changes in your image. Y'all will, still, run into a white thumbnail appear adjacent to the thumbnail prototype of the layer.

When you're working on layer masks, anything painted white is fully visible while anything in black is blocked or subconscious.

Different shades of grey volition create dissimilar transparencies. In other words, a light gray will exist more transparent than a dark grayness.

Step 5: Color your layer mask

In the Photoshop layer panel you can see the layer masks thumbnail

At present it''s time to add color to the layer mask that you created. Go along in mind that the darker it is, the less visible it will become.

What I want to practice in this example is to embrace the original sky. For that to happen information technology needs to be white in the layer mask, so that it'south fully visible.

So the bottom part needs to be fully subconscious considering I desire the foreground from the original image to be visible. So I take to make that black in the layer mask.

Finally, to create a realistic issue and fully integrate both images, there needs to be a transition area in between.

For this, I can apply the slope tool. Once I activate it, the options panel becomes available at the peak.

Here I'll choose a linear slope that goes from blackness to white. I'g going to get out the mode equally Normal and the Opacity at 100%.

These settings can be different for yous depending on your images and what you're trying to accomplish.

Maybe you don't even need the gradient tool if there's no transition between areas or elements. If this is the example, yous can utilize the brush tool and prepare the foreground color to black, and paint over everything you want to comprehend.

Back to the slope tool that I'one thousand using: you lot just have to click where you want to start the grading. And so drag across the transition area and let go of the mouse button when you want to cease it.

If the event is non exactly what you needed, you can repeat the process to create a new gradient until yous're happy. Yous can always bank check on the result by property the Alt key and clicking on the layer mask thumbnail.

This will let you lot see the mask without the images. Y'all tin can as well disable or delete the layer mask past right-clicking on it and choosing the correct control from the menu.

Stride 6: Fine-tune

Composite image using layer mask adjustments in Photoshop

One time you're happy with the gradient, there might be some areas that may demand some fine-tuning.

You can catch the brush tool and make some targeted editing. Fix the default colors in the swatches by clicking on the icon next to them or using the keyboard shortcut D.

When you exercise this, black volition be prepare to the foreground color and you lot can paint with it anything else you desire to hibernate with your layer mask.

Y'all tin can then use the keyboard shortcut X to toggle the swatches from the foreground to the background. This mode y'all'll have white to brand visible anything y'all paint with it.

Y'all tin likewise add adjustment layers to your images and re-create the layer mask to them by holding the Alt key and dragging it to the other new layers.

Remember that you can also change the blending modes in layers with masks. The same goes for the opacity, and so you tin can take total control of your blended.