how exclusion blending mode works

I got a few comments about the PSE part of the last tutorial, so I’m happy to go over that in a little more detail.

I noticed you like using Fill layers (like the navy here & grey in another post or pic I saw you do…at least I think it was you, heehee!). Anyway, how do you determine what color to use? And if you’re using it in Exclusion mode…does that mean you’re excluding the navy blue color from the picture or what?

Okay, I’ll be honest with you – I learned about navy blue exclusion on accident one day, and simply put, it brings an automatic vintage tone to the image.

After researching, I found out how it works. It is rather confusing, but I’ll try to explain it anyway.

Exclusion blending mode inverts lower layers according to the brightness values in the active layer. White inverts the composite pixels absolutely, black inverts them not at all, and the other brightness values invert them to some degree in between.

First, let’s talk about inverting colors – basically, that just means that white would turn black. And all other colors would turn into the invert [opposite] color.

Let’s use this rainbow as an example.

Now, using the definition above, we want to see the absolute invert of each color, so I’ll add a new fill layer in white and put it into exclusion blending mode to see what happens.

This will also explain how I add fill layers & change the blending modes.

step 1: add new solid color fill layer

step 2: click on “ok”

step 3: choose color (for our example of how exclusion blending works, I’m choosing white)

step 4: put the white fill layer into exclusion blending mode

And this is what happens to the rainbow!

As you can see, each color is totally inverted. I may research and see what the invert of each color is … you know, in all of my spare time. *wink wink*

Now, if we did a black fill layer, nothing would change.

And if we do a navy blue fill color and put it into exclusion blending mode, you can see that the colors are just barely inverted. They kind of look desaturated, but you can see that the white is already starting to get a little darker.

So, when you are choosing your fill layers for exclusion blending mode, you want to stay as dark as possible – if you choose a light yellow or lavendar or something like that, your colors are going to become more and more inverted.

As for how I decide which colors to use and which blending mode to use, it’s a total guessing game. I almost always use the navy blue in exclusion blending mode, because I love the tone it puts on my images. After that, I just play around with colors. Once you start using fill layers, you’ll figure out what looks good and what doesn’t.

I hope that helps explain a little more about how fill layers work on your images. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

And subscribe to my feed or receive emails with each new post to be the first to know about new tutorials!