A guide to the 46 blend modes in Paint by Zaweba

A blend mode decides how a layer's colours combine with the layers underneath. Normal simply covers what's below. Every other mode does some kind of maths with the two sets of colours, darkening, lightening, adding contrast or swapping in hue or colour. Paint by Zaweba offers 46 of them, which is more than most people will ever need, so it helps to know how they group and how to try them quickly.

Trying modes without commitment

Hovering a mode in the list previews it on the canvas. Run the pointer down the list and the picture changes as you go, and none of that hovering adds an undo step. Only the mode you click is applied. That alone makes the long list less daunting: rather than reading about every mode, you can simply look.

The families

Darkening modes keep the darker of the two colours or multiply them together. Linear Burn and Darker Colour sit here. They are good for shadows, for laying line art over colour, and for adding texture that only darkens.

Lightening modes do the opposite, which suits light effects, glows and screen-like overlays. Lighter Colour is one of them.

The contrast group lightens where the top layer is light and darkens where it is dark. Vivid Light, Linear Light and Pin Light are strong members, and Hard Mix pushes everything to flat, saturated colours, which makes it useful for graphic poster effects.

Comparative modes include Subtract and Divide. Divide is a practical one for photographers: dividing by a blurred copy of an image can even out uneven lighting. Negation and Reflect are in this neighbourhood too, and Glow, the partner of Reflect, makes bright additive effects.

Grain Extract and Grain Merge come from photo retouching work and are a pair: extract the fine detail from a layer, then merge it back after changing the rest.

Component modes take hue, saturation, colour or lightness from one layer and the rest from the other. Paint by Zaweba adds LCh and HSI versions, which handle colour in different ways and can give cleaner results when you recolour.

Dissolve scatters pixels randomly where the layer is partly transparent, a deliberately rough look.

Special modes

Pass Through is for groups. It lets the layers inside a group blend with everything beneath the group as if the group weren't there, rather than being blended together first. If an adjustment inside a group seems to affect only the group, check whether the group is set to Pass Through.

Behind and Clear are for painting tools and fills rather than layers. Behind paints only where the layer is transparent, as if the paint went underneath what's there. Clear removes pixels where you paint.

Practical uses

Texture overlays are the commonest. Put a paper or grain texture on top and try the contrast modes at low opacity. Colour grading is another: a layer of flat colour in a component mode tints the picture. Line art on its own layer above the colour layer works well in a darkening mode so white paper drops away.

Habits that cause harsh blends

Choosing a mode and leaving opacity at full is a common reason for harsh results. Many modes look best at half strength or less.

Forgetting Pass Through on groups can make effects look wrong. And reading the list top to bottom on every job wastes time. Learn three or four modes that suit your work and use hover preview for the rest.

The blend mode list is a palette of its own. With hover preview, exploring it costs nothing, and the right mode often turns a flat edit into one that looks finished.