Using Blend Modes: Multiply

We know about blend modes, and they are a truly powerful thing, but how can we use them to our advantage?

This tute reminds me of my days working for a new media company where we would often get company logos as letterheads or business cards, and we had to scan them in to use in websites.

The client invariable wanted their logo to sit on their corporate colour, gradients, etc. ahhh how I used to pray to the Photoshop gods, asking for a quick solution to speed up my crazyworkload!

One day, as if by magic, I happened upon a curious mistake: whilst using blend modes, I observed that the blend mode multiply effectively knocked out the white pixels in my logo, giving me great results on pure black and white logos.I could now position the logo on gradients, textures- you name it!

This technique has served me very well when doing 2 or 3 colour print jobs too.

1. The Scenario: you need to position a few logos on a dark coloured annual brochure or website.You want to create some kind of consistency and neatness, quickly!

2. Paste the logo on a new layer above the gradient background. Make sure "Show Transform Tools" is selected in the Control Palette and start ersizing the logo if necessary- remember Shift as you resize, to keep proportions good!

3. From the layer blend modes dropdown, select Multiply.

4. Done!

5. Try it with another logo. This one has areas of dark green.

6. Works well, but you might want to desaturate this layer to make the green logo graphic black.