If you are a user of Photoshop, probably you have been enjoying the benefits of layer blend modes. The layer blend modes are one of the simple and advanced ways to change the way two or more layers’ blend or interact, with each other.
There are many advantages of using layer blend modes like you can create creative effects, using the Screen blend can brighten an underexposed image, the Multiply blend mode can darken an overexposed image and an Overlay blend will instantly give the contrast effect to an image.
You may also be familiar with the concept of merging layers together, which has many benefits to photoshop an image.
Even though the blend modes and merging layers have useful advantages, sometimes strange things may happen while trying to merge multiple layers together. You may end up with an image that looks entirely different from the image you had before merging the layers. It may be the big loss to you! So, in this guide, we’ll look at an instance of the problem, brief on why it happens, and learn an easy way to resolve it.
Issue with merging blending modes
Assume that you have a composite image of three separate photos and a few blend modes. When we look that image in the Layers panel, all the three photos should be added to your document with each image sitting on its own separate layer.
Now let’s learn how to open multiple images as layers in Photoshop…
Considering one photo at a time starting with the one at the bottom of composite image, turn off the top two layers by clicking on their visibility icons.
Now, for the image at the bottom, set the blend mode to Normal (the default one). Next, turn on the second image (the one on the middle layer) by clicking its visibility icon. Set this image also to the Normal blend mode. Now, to blend the two images together, first click on Layer 2 in the Layers panel to select it. Then, change its blend mode from Normal to Multiply. Also, lower its Opacity value down to 60%.
Then go the third image and turn it back on in the document by clicking its visibility icon. To blend this top image with the photos below it, click on Layer 3 to select it, then change its blend mode from Normal to Overlay.
You are happy with the results so far and wish to make further edits to the overall image. Before you do that, you’ll need to merge the layers together.
Let’s see if we could merge the layers or not!
Well, there are a couple of ways you could merge layers. One way would be to use Photoshop’s Merge Down command which takes the currently-selected layer and merges it with the layer directly below it. That sounds like exactly what we need, so with the top layer i.e. layer 3 selected in the Layers panel, go up to the Layer menu in the Menu Bar along the top of the screen and choose Merge Down.
Now when you look at the results of merging two layers, you could see something’s not right1 The image has suddenly lost most of its contrast. It also looks much darker than it did before.
The reason for this is, even though the top two layers have in fact been merged together onto Layer 2, the Overlay blend mode is gone! The overall image is left out with only Multiply blend mode. That why the image looks so much darker!
Another way you can try to merge the top two layers together is with Photoshop’s Merge Layers command. With the top layer already selected, press and hold the Shift key and click on the middle layer. This selects both the Overlay and Multiply layers at the same time.
With both layers selected, go back up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen and this time, select Merge Layers. At this time, you’ll get to see that the top two images merged together, but the third image would be completely gone.
By this, we can say that Photoshop once again merged the top two layers, but discarded both Overlay and Multiply blend modes, setting the merged layer to Normal. Due to this, the merged layer is completely blocking the image on the bottom layer from view.
Why merging blending modes in not possible?
- The very first reason is that of what blend modes in Photoshop do, or more accurately, what they don’t; blend modes don’t change the actual pixels on the layer
- The next reason is that a layer in Photoshop can have only one blend mode applied to it at any given time
The hidden solution for the problem
Well, here the problem was you were forgetting about the layer on the bottom (the one set to the Normal blend mode). It’s not just the top two layers creating the composition; it’s a combination of all three layers, which means that if you want to merge the result, you’ll have to merge all three layers i.e. the one set to Overlay, the one set to Multiply, and the one set to Normal.
To simply merge the result, Photoshop includes a special trick. First, select the top layer in the Layers panel. Press and hold your Shift, Alt, and Ctrl (Win)/ Shift, Option and Command(Mac) keys on your keyboard and press the letter E.
Doing so will create one more new layer called Layer 4.
Now, to get a better sense of what just happened, press and hold Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key and click on Layer 4’s visibility icon. This keeps Layer 4 visible but turns off all the other layers in the document
Now, it’s a good idea to rename the top layer. To do that, double-click on the name “Layer 4” to highlight it, then type in “Merged” as the new layer name. To accept the name change, press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) on the keyboard.
There we go! This how we merge multiple layers and set them to different blend modes in Photoshop!
“If at all, in the process of merging layers if something goes wrong and you miss any layers of your PSD file, then you can make use of Remo Repair PST Software and recover PSD layers easily.”