Using blend modes to emulate an image transfer effect

- One way to emulate an image transfer is by using a scan of an image transfer done the traditional way. In order to view both of the images I have open, I'll use shift + cmd + t, to tile them, which is a keyboard shortcut I set up in a previous movie. And now, I want to make sure that I take the edge scan and drag and drop it into the magnolia. And the reason that I want to do it that way is because the edge scan is in grayscale. If I drag the magnolia on top of this file of the edges, it will convert the magnolia image to grayscale.

So, I will click on the edge scan to make it the active document, and from the Layers panel, I'll select the Background, and drag and drop it on top of the magnolia. Then I no longer need the edge scan, so I'll Close that and tap the "f" key to go to full screen mode. Now, because I want these edges to be super-imposed on top of the magnolia, I'm going to change the blend mode for the edges, to Multiply. However, when I do that, obviously we can still see the original photograph and I'm getting this semi-transparency around the edges.

The first thing that we'll do is we'll remove this inner area of the photograph so that we can just see the magnolia. In order to do that, I'll select the Polygonal Lasso Tool, and I'll click in the upper left, where the photograph stops and this edge begins, then I'll click in the upper right, down at the lower right, lower left, and then I can double-click in order to close that selection. Now, on Layer 1, if I add the Mask icon, it's going to only show what's inside the selection and what I want to show is outside of the selection so I'll hold down the Option key, and then click on the mask, which will give me an inverted mask.

The edge of the mask is a little bit too sharp so, on the Properties panel, I'll use the Feather slider, in order to soften up that edge. And I'm going to be rather generous here because I do want a nice, soft, fuzzy edge there. Then, in order to make this outer area completely opaque, I'm going to make a copy of this layer. The easiest way to do this is either use the keyboard shortcut, cmd + j, or drag the Layer down to the New Layer icon in order to duplicate it.

This layer, I'm going to change the blend mode back to Normal, but I do want a semi-transparent area right around here in these dark edges. So, I'll select my brush tool, make sure that I'm painting with black because I want to hide the opaque areas. My Opacity is set to 100%, and make sure that my mask is targeted in the Layers panel. But, did you notice what happened when I targeted the mask as opposed to the image? If you look at my foreground and background color, when the image is selected, black is my foreground color, but when the mask is selected, it switched to white.

So, I need to tap the "x" key to make sure that black is the foreground color, and then I'll click once in the upper left here, hold down the Shift key and click again, hold down the Shift key again and click in the lower right, again in the lower left and then one more time back here at the top. So, if I hide this middle layer, this edge layer, you can see that what I've done is I've got a layer here at the top that is 100% in Normal blend mode.

So, we're seeing the white edge here. In the layer below, Layer 1, that's set to Multiply, I'm getting this nice, semi-transparent, or semi-opaque area which is showing these edges. The one last thing that I might want to do in order to make this image look more realistic, is convert the background into a smart object and then add a smart filter. So, I'll right-mouse-click on the Background Layer and Convert it to a Smart Object.

I'll tap the "d" key, to make sure that my default colors are black as my foreground and white as the background, and then I'll choose Filter, Filter Gallery. And in Filter Gallery, I want to select the Distort menu, and Diffuse Glow. Then to view the entire image, I'll use the popup menu, and select Fit on Screen. I can increase the Graininess Amount and lower the Glow Amount as well as lower the Clear Amount.

But this will just add a little bit of noise as well as a little bit of a glow to the image, making it look a little bit more antique, and not quite as perfect as a straight photograph. So, there you go, an easy way to use blend modes to emulate an image transfer effect.