Welcome to the thirteenth edition.      12/9/2006

Tonight I want to talk about using blending modes in both Photoshop  and Paint Shop Pro. I'm preparing to teach several digital photography classes at a "school" that a friend and I have put together for the first of the year, here in Leavenworth, WA Experience Art

I don't know how I could have been working with photographs in both these programs and not have found out about blending modes ??? Now that I've found them I am totally intrigued! You might want to start by viewing a couple of pages from Uwe and Bettina Steinmueller: "One Photo, many Images" and "Tonality and Colors in Photoshop and Raw Converters"

So as not to forget Paint Shop Pro take a look at "Layer Blend Modes in Paint Shop Pro". That page is about the best list of all the modes and the effects you can get using them. You can enjoy the About:Graphics Software site if you read the articles by looking at Print Preview in your browser rather than sorting out the article from all the adv. junk on their pages.

I'll be back soon to share examples as I learn. >>>(December 16th) Now I have written a tutorial about the blending modes, using both a color and a black and white image: The originals.
The tutorial begins here: Using Blending Modes with Adjustment Layers

In the meantime, I found this article "Step-by-Step Processing of Photographs using Photoshop". If you can wade through it all and compare it to the workflow you use you'll have a better understanding of how to get the job DONE! Print it (on ledger sized paper) and read it 3 times!!!
An Image Processing Workflow

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Two very worthwhile books for Photoshop Elements 5. Find good descriptions at Amazon.com: Photoshop Elements 5, The Missing Manual by Barbara Brundage and
The Photoshop Elements 5 book for digital Photographers by Scott Kelby - a great book even though I don't care for his humor. Neither has much about Blending modes!

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Have I mentioned Radiant Vista lately? I recently found a wonderful tutorial in the Video Tutorials section about Combining two exposures. Take a whole evening to download these videos!