In this video, we are going to talk about more layer properties and that will be opacity and blending mode. If we look at the layer darker, up here we can see we have a pulldown list that says normal, and a slider called opacity. Let's talk about opacity. First, if you want to follow along, just download the file I provided for this lesson. opacity controls how opaque or how transparent a layer is against the layers below it. As you can see, in this file, I have three layers, one background layer with solid gray color called BG and one layer on top of it with a star shape and these colorful boxes and finally, the top layer which contain a grayscale boxes.

Okay. Now if I select this layer, and then drag this opacity value You left and right, we can see layer will get more transparent as we drag the opacity to the left towards zero percent, and it will become more opaque as we drag the opacity slider to the right towards 100%. Now you need to understand that both opacity slider and the blending mode in here are contextual, meaning it shows the value of currently active layer. So if I make these layers opacity to around 50% Oh yes, besides dragging with your mouse cursor, you can also Hover your mouse on top of it without clicking and just scroll your mouse wheel. Or you can also input by typing the value directly through that you need to right click on it, then type 50 for example. Okay, now we have this layers opacity set to 50%.

Now notice if I Select this layer below it. The opacity slider shows 100%. If we select this layer again, it shows 50%. So again, these values will change based on whichever layer is currently active. Let's change this back to 100%. This pulldown list controls the blending mode of the active layer.

Okay, so what is exactly blending mode. Blending Mode is a mathematical algorithm which controls how colors blend between each other, or to be more precise between color in one layer with color on the layers below it. Blending Mode is a general term in computer graphic. It is a term not only applicable to creator, but it exists in almost every computer graphics software in the world. At least every software which allows you to do image composition. If you open the Layer Properties window by right clicking on a layer and then choose Properties in here, we can see that we can control the blending in the Properties panel also, just click Cancel for now.

Okay, when we see the word normal in here, this simply means the layer use the default blending mode, which basically block everything below it. If we click on this blending mode, pull down lists, as we can see, creator comes with so many blending modes and normal is just one of them. They are categorized in several sub lists in here. Now obviously we are not going to discuss all of them one by one in this video. That will be too long to cover. We are only going to discuss the six most commonly used blending modes and they are normal multiply screen, overly Color Dodge and lighten.

Okay, for the rest of the blending modes, you can simply test them one by one to see which one you like best. Okay, if we use the Move Tool and move this layer so that the grayscale boxes blocking the star and all the colorful boxes in here, it will just block everything out. This is the normal behavior of a layer which basically a full opaque image will block the visibility of images below it. And we call this blending mode as normal. Okay. Now what if we change the normal Blending Mode to Multiply?

When I move this on top of this star image or this colorful strip, it darkens it. So now we know that multiply blending mode darkens images below it. What's unique about multiply blending mode is White Collar will become pure transparent. black color however, will become fully opaque. So to recap, multiply blending mode will make everything below it visible but darker, Black will be fully opaque and white will be fully transparent and other color spectrum will follow the pattern, which is the darker the color, the more opaque it becomes. the brighter the color, the more transparent it becomes.

Usually, we use multiply blending mode to add shadows to our illustration. Now let's change the Blending Mode to Screen. screen is the opposite of multiply it lighten everything below it. As you already noticed in here, how it affects color below it. Screen blending mode makes black collar become fully transparent in white collar become fully opaque. We use screen blending mode mainly for adding glows or highlights to an image.

Next is overlay blending mode. The overlay blending mode is like the multiply and the screen combined together. So dark colors will have multiplier effect, which make everything below it darker, bright colors will have a screen effect which make everything below it brighter. The unique effect of overlay blending mode is that a perfect 50% gray color will become fully transparent as we can see in here. One strange behavior of overlay blending mode that I found is that if the colors below it are pure RGB colors, what I mean by that pure red color, pure blue color and pure green color, the current layers color will become transparent no matter what color you have on it. Usually, I use awfully blending mode for adding texture to the illustration and also for additional color correction process.

The last two blending modes are used a lot is lightened and Color Dodge. Both of these blending modes are still one family with screen, meaning they all make images below them become writer, but each of them has slightly different characteristic. I use lightened blending mode, mainly for adding fog effect or adding particles in the air. And I use Color Dodge for adding strong glowing effects on the illustration. Okay, guys, I think we cover enough information about blending modes. I suggest that you play around with them.

Just try to experiment with different kind of blending modes available and see what kind of artworks you can create by using them.