Summary: Create a digital pixel effect in Photoshop by fading an image into pixels, an effect often used in ads that sell anything that has to do with digital. We'll also look at a couple of variations on the effect, including how easy it is to create a completely different effect simply by changing blend modes!

Written by Steve Patterson
Exclusively for Photoshop Essentials.com.

Part of our complete collection of Photo Effects tutorials.

In this Photoshop Effects tutorial, we'll learn how to create a "digital pixel" effect, which is often used in ads that sell anything to do with digital. We're going to first pixelate our entire image using a very simple filter, and then we'll experiment with a layer mask, the opacity setting and some layer blend modes to create different variations on our effect. At the end of the tutorial, we'll even see how something as simple as changing the blend mode of a layer can create an entirely new effect!

Here's the original image I'll be starting with:

As I said, we'll be looking at a few different variations on the effect. Here's the first one we'll be working towards:

Here's the second one:

And just as an example of how easily we can create what seems like an entirely different effect simply by changing a layer's blend mode, we'll finish off with this one:

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Let's get started.

Step 1: Duplicate The Background Layer

The first thing I need to do for this effect is to duplicate my Background layer. With my image open in Photoshop, I can see in my Layers palette that I currently have only one layer, the Background layer, which contains my image:

I'm going to duplicate that layer using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac), and now I can see in my Layers palette that I have two layers, with the copy of the Background layer above the original. Photoshop has named it "Layer 1":

Step 2: Pixelate The Duplicate Layer

Next we need to pixelate the new layer, and we can do that by going up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choosing Pixelate, and then choosing Mosaic. This brings up the "Mosaic" filter's dialog box. Drag the slider bar at the bottom to change the Cell Size option, which increases or decreases the number and size of pixels that are created from the image. Dragging to the right creates fewer but larger pixels, while dragging to the left gives you more but smaller pixels. I'm going to set my Cell Size to about 18:

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box. Here's my image after applying the Mosaic filter:

Now that we've pixelated the image, there's a few different things we can do with it, and we'll look at them next.

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