Blend Photos With Apply Image In Photoshop

On the previous page, we looked at everything we need to know to blend two images together using Photoshop's Apply Image command, and we saw that we could get decent results just by leaving the options in the dialog box set to their defaults. But the real power of the Apply Image command comes from playing around with the options and seeing what sort of new effects you can create! In this next part of the tutorial, we'll look at a few examples of what we can come up with simply by trying different options in the dialog box. There's no "right" or "wrong" settings to use. It's simply a matter of experimenting and having fun until you're happy with the results.

Here once again is the result we get by blending the two images using the default option settings:

Changing The Blend Mode
The easiest way to get a much different effect with Apply Image is by simply changing the Blending option and trying different blend modes. If you recall, my blend mode was originally set to "Overlay". Watch what happens when I try a different blend mode. I'll change my Blending option to "Screen":

If I look again at my target image to see a preview of the effect, I can see that I'm now getting a much different result:

For a completely different effect, try changing the Blending option to "Difference":

Here's my new result, again a completely different effect simply by changing the Blending option:

Selecting Individual Color Channels
This time, I'll leave the Blending option set to "Difference" and let's see what happens when we try blending an individual color channel from the source image. As we saw on the previous page, my source image is using the RGB color mode, which means that it's being made up of a red channel, a green channel and a blue channel. By default, Apply Image blends all three channels at once (which is referred to as the "composite channel"). But we can isolate individual color channels from the source image using the Channel option to give us even more creative possibilities.

When all three channels are being used together, you'll see the Channel option in the dialog box set to "RGB" (assuming of course that your image is using the RGB color mode which is most likely is). I'm going to change the option so that I'm blending only the red channel from the source image. To do that, I'll simply click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the letters "RGB" and choose "Red" from the list:

And here we can see that just by isolating one of the color channels from the source image, this gives me a different take on the previous result:

As a final example, and to get away from the more "artsy" looking effects, I'll set my Channel option back to "RGB" so that I'm once again blending all three color channels from the source image at once, and I'll try changing my Blending option to "Hard Light":

As you can see, there's no "recipe" for creating effects using Apply Image. It's simply a matter of changing different options and seeing what you get, and a lot of it depends on the images you're using. Here's my result after changing my Blending option to "Hard Light". This sends my guitar player into the background and brings the concert crowd up front:

As I mentioned at the beginning of the tutorial, blending a couple of images together like this is only scratching the surface of what you can do with the Apply Image command, but we've now covered everything you need to know to start using it and we've looked at a few examples of the different effects you can achieve by experimenting with the various options in the dialog box. At this point, it's simply a matter of having fun with your own images and seeing what you can come up with! Once you've successfully blended two images together, try adding a third image! Here, after blending my first two images, I've used Apply Image again to blend in a photo of a grungy-looking brick wall to give my final effect some texture:

And there we have it!

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