Photoshop Image Integration: Mastering Smart Objects and Blending Modes

We've added this guy onto this background, and to make it feel more like it's part of this background, I want to add some more ambiance. Like if there's fog, there should probably be some fog in front of him, like it's more like he's embedded into that environment here. So I've got another image that I can use to kind of put on top of him, and I could open it,  copy and paste it in.

I could also place embedded, and I want to talk about something about placing embedded images into here as smart objects. And let's say we're not sure exactly if we're going to size it or not. One of the downsides, of course, is that when you place embedded, it does increase the file size, but you get the flexibility of playing with size.

So there are pros and cons, but let's say you're not sure if you're going to size it. So you're fog image in here. So it'll scale it down to fit if necessary, but I can play with the size.

And let's say I like something like this for its kind of texture. Technically, it's not fog,  and we called it fog. It's kind of more like almost like a sky photo with some galaxies.

I don't know, maybe that's even a planet in there technically. But I think once we get it kind of with some transparency, it'll add some kind of interesting visuals to this if we get rid of the black. And I want the white parts of this, but I don't want the black parts of this.

So I like the textural part of the appearance here. I need to blend with the underlying layers. Specifically, I chose something that was white and black as opposed to something else.

There was a color image, for example. If it was a color image, I'd want to convert it to black and white, which I could do by going in and converting to grayscale. I could do that in its original file if necessary, but this is already black and white.

And you're gonna see why I want it to be black and white in just a moment here. But I need some sort of blending to blend this into this background. And one form of blending is opacity, where we can simply see through.

We can make something transparent. And so as I'm making this transparent or changing the opacity, I am seeing more of the things that are underneath. We see the top layer and then it's blending into those underlying layers.

But by the time I see enough of those underlying layers, now I don't see enough of the top layer. So this particular form of blending is not a great form for this particular effect. Instead, I'm going to go to the blend mode menu next to it.

And these are various different types of blending which work in different ways. And some of these can be very useful in certain situations. So normal means that there is not a blending mode.

It would just be the opacity of this. And they kind of group these into different effects. They put in darkening effects where these will take the current layer and they will blend it into the underlying layers, the ones that are below it, using some sort of blending technique.

Each one of these is going to be a little different. But notice how all of these darken the stuff. So especially here, notice how it has a darkening effect.

So the things in this group have a darkening effect. The thing in this group have a lightening effect, which for fog, fog would have a lightening effect, right? Fog is bright. So that's kind of a better effect in what I'm going for here.

Now to keep going, I'm going to come back to these in just a moment. These have a contrast effect. So for example, if you say to multiply, which is kind of like a drop shadow, a drop shadow would, if you're casting a shadow,  would only darken something.

So multiply has a shadowing, a darkening effect, as opposed to screen, which is more of a highlight. A highlight, when something is on glass and there's a highlight,  it's a lightening effect. If highlights are screened and shadows are multiplied,  overlay would say, let me take the lights and brighten and let's take the darks and darken.

So it's kind of like the bright areas get screened and the dark areas get multiplied. So it cranks up contrast because if you're lightening and darkening, you're going to have a higher contrast image than what you're starting with. Soft light versus hard light.

Well, harsh light,  hard light is a harsher light. It's a more contrasting light. So some of them have more contrast than others, but these will all play with contrast, generally darkening darks and brightening brights.

These are all about opposites and inversions. And the last one is color related,  which we're not really changing the color of this. So I'm going to stick to the darkening.

Fog isn't darkening, so I'm not going to go with that. I'm going to stick to the lightening effects or the contrast effects. So I might try something like screen here and that will kind of brighten the background.

Notice the lighten here does not have as much of an effect and it depends on the brightness of this layer and the brightness of the underlying layers. Notice how lighten says,  hey, I am darker than the underlying layer because remember what was there was black. So lighten says only if I am brighter than the underlying layer will I lighten.

So depending on this layer versus the other one, some parts will be brightened, some parts will be unchanged. Screen is a bit different. Screen says I will always lighten, but just depending on how bright I am.

So the current layer here, if that current layer is black, it has no effect. There's no brightness. It will not brighten at all.

So black will disappear because it has no brightening effect. Now, if something is a gray, it has a little bit of a brightening effect. So it'll brighten a little bit all the way up to white where it would brighten a lot.

So with something like screen,  it will always brighten unless it's black. It's just a matter of how much does it brighten something. Now, with something like this, while I can explain the particular intricacies of how they work with a lot of things, you could try it and see what effect you like.

So with something like lighten, kind of interesting here now, it might be too pronounced. So I still have the opacity that I can go in and I can lower the opacity and see what I like. Do I like the lighten? Do I like the screen? I think the screen with obviously full opacity is too much.

I need to pull that back. So it's a bit more interesting. And this does add a little bit of interest kind of in the foreground.

Might be a little too much with that high of an opacity, but that kind of adds some fog to it. I also kind of like the color dodge a little bit too here, but I don't want that to be blown out. So I wouldn't want that to be very high if I'm choosing that particular one.

So that kind of adds some interest and doesn't change this area so much. There's not really a right or wrong thing to choose here. It just depends on which particular effect you like in here.

But the idea is that you can take a layer, blend it with the underlying layers in a way that's different from just simple opacity. And you get something that's an interesting result. Now I did place this in as a smart object.

And let's say that whatever blend mode you're choosing, let's say that this little almost planet or moon or whatever it is, maybe that's still visible and you want to retouch that. Because I placed this in as a smart object, I cannot directly edit here. I have to edit the smart object in a new window where I'm looking at the original,  which will actually make it easier to retouch anyway.

If I were to double click on that thumbnail, it opens up the original and I did embed this. So it is a copy. It's not the one that's sitting on my hard drive.

It's a copy that's stored only in this file. And I can change this by going in and retouching this. Maybe I go in with my spot healing brush and just get rid of that little area right there.

I think I like that. Now,  I did that in a non-destructive, sorry, I did that in a destructive way, changing the original layer. You might think, oh wait, damn, but you're supposed to work non-destructively.

So, okay, let me, let me undo. And let's say I duplicate the layer. I call this retouching and then I do my retouching so I can compare the before and the after.

I've got an editable file. Now, because this was originally placed as a JPEG, JPEGs do not support layers. If I were to save this normally as a JPEG, it would flatten all my layers into just one.

The JPEG format doesn't support layers, unlike the Photoshop format, which does. Unfortunately, because I placed in that JPEG as a smart object and it kept it as a JPEG,  if I go to try to save this, when I say save, it says, hey, I can't do this unless you flatten it, basically. So they're saying flatten to discard the extra stuff because it can't just do a save.

It's not ideal, but I like this change. I think, I think I can commit to it. So I'm going to go ahead and do that.

So I'm going to flatten the image, which gets rid of all my layers. I commit to that change. Then it will allow me to save it because of that JPEG format.

I just get okay to the JPEG options. And then when I come back, it does updates. So let this be kind of a warning that when we place in our files, a lot of times you're going to be working with JPEGs.

And unfortunately, when you place in a JPEG as a smart object,  it will not let you add layers into that smart object, even if you want to. I really wish there was an option that when I place this in, I could automatically convert it into a Photoshop document when I place it, that it wouldn't keep it as a JPEG. So as a workaround, if you know that instead of just placing in a JPEG, what you might want to do is instead open it, open the JPEG and convert it to a smart object here.

If I go to my layers and I say right click on that or control click, if you don't have a right click, if you convert that to a smart object that way,  that, which I'll call this guy here, that is a Photoshop document inside. If you convert one or more layers, because you can select either one or as many layers as you want,  when you convert those, it'll put all those layers together and it will keep it as a Photoshop document. I could then copy this layer, go to another file, paste it into that file and notice paste it as a smart object.

So I'm going to close this original one here and that smart object, which you used by right clicking and saying convert to smart object, when you open it up, you'll notice it is a PSB. That's almost like a PSD, but PSB is for Photoshop big. Photoshop big just means that it supports more than two gigabyte file sizes.

So a normal Photoshop document supports up to two gigs in file size. PSB can be bigger. It can do anything up to two gigs and beyond.

Since they don't know how big the file is, they just automatically convert to Photoshop big, the PSB instead of PSD, just in case you need that. It doesn't hurt if you go to PSB and so internally they just use that, but it basically is going to function just like a Photoshop document. It just can be bigger if necessary.

It supports layers, so if you need to create additional layers, you'd be able to and you could just save and it wouldn't give you that message about having to flatten. So let this be a lesson to try to either place Photoshop documents in rather than JPEGs or convert to a smart object using your layers panel instead of placing the JPEG directly in. So go ahead and try this out yourself in exercise 2b.