Test Your Skills 4

Test Your Skills

Blending Mindset

The more you play around with blending, the more you can develop what I like to call a “Blending Mindset.” By that I mean that blending often comes to mind as a solution for a problem or as a means of adding an artistic feel to your page.

It’s not something that can exactly be taught—it mostly comes with experience—but I’d like to share my process with you to show you the possibilities.

To keep it simple I’ll use two photos to create a blended page. I’ve already placed them in my document and added a stroke outline and custom drop shadow to the photo of the girl swinging.

Question

How can you blend the background photo of trees onto the page without using a blend mode?

SHOW THE ANSWER

Answer

You can use a clipping mask or a layer mask. In this case I used a white to black gradient on a layer mask to make the lower third of the photo taper off and disappear.

Now let’s choose a background paper. My kit papers are mostly shades of cream and brown, which are neutral colors that will go well with my images.

Be careful about using background colors that aren’t neutral on a blended page. Color can hog the focus or detract from your image(s). If you do use a color, in general you’ll want to keep it more desaturated.

Question

Which of these two papers would look best behind my image? Is there a third alternative?

SEE MY PICK

I felt that the darker paper would make my image too dark, since a lot of the trees and leaves are backlit and thus dark, so I chose the lighter paper.

But then I added the dark paper above the light background paper and masked in just a bit of the darker paper around the lower edges and corners.

LET’S ADD ELEMENTS

Here’s my page after adding the elements. By placing a cluster of elements in the lower left I created a diagonal flow through the rays of light coming through the trees and up to the photo.

Notice that I applied the principle of repetition by using elements that repeated the color of the little girl’s cute red boots. I also repeated the shades of cream and brown. The splatter image would be counted as a blended image since it’s a 2D element.