How to Use Blend If in Adobe Photoshop in 60 Seconds

Using Blend If to adjust Colors in Photoshop

Welcome to our Photoshop in 60 Seconds series, in which you can learn a Photoshop skill, feature, or technique in just a minute!

Photoshop in 60 Seconds: Using Blend If

The Blend If sliders are one of Adobe Photoshop's most powerful layer blending options. They give you an incredibly nuanced control over how information from two separate layers is combined based on their luminosity values.

In the screencast below, I show the Blend If sliders in action.

How to Use Blend If

Let's look at Blend If in action. I want to give this photo a Hollywood style teal orange tone.

Kat Image Before — The image before colour toning. Model: Kat Clinch.

I've got two solid color layers set to the Color Layer Blend Mode, one called Shadows which is teal, and the other called Highlights, which is orange.

Setting Up Layer Blend Modes for Blend If

I want the teal to only effect the dark areas of the image. To do that, I Double-click on the layer to get the Layer Options Panel. Using the Underlying Layer slider, I grab the white triangles and drag them to the left. Option-clicking splits the triangle so we can have a better blended effect.

Do the same for the orange highlights. This time, however, we want to preserve the shadows so drag the black triangles to the right. Once again, Split them to feather the blend.

Adjusting the Orange Highlights with Blend If

The only thing left to do is tweak the overall Layer Opacities and you're done.

Adjusting the Layer Opacity After Blend If

Want to see this in action? Check out the video above to see this lesson at work!

A Bit More Detail

Want to learn more about Adobe Photoshop's vast tools and settings? Check out these tutorials below:

60 Seconds!?

This is part of a new series of quick video tutorials on Tuts+. We’re aiming to introduce a range of subjects, all in 60 seconds—just enough to whet your appetite. Let us know in the comments what you thought of this video and what else you’d like to see explained in 60 seconds!