NoBs Digital Dogbowl

How about some Background on Backgrounds by Bill Guy

If there is one thing that Photoshop creators love it is cool backgrounds and if you search on the web you will find many sites that are willing to sell you many different backgrounds. Some are realistic but the biggest sellers are far out colors and shapes that can be placed on websites or behind high tech types of images.

I have to admit that some are very creative, sometimes so creative they take away from the image. I tend to like simple so that it will not be so wild as to distract from my photography. Well they really aren't that hard to make and can be very creative too.

Start by just making a blank image any size or ppi. Go to the Graduate Tool (found under the Paint bucket fill tool) and picking any color graduate. Here I just grabbed the Black to dark orange and dragged from one corner to the other.

Then I created a new layer and picking the Red, Magenta, Red graduate went from the bottom to the top at a slight angle.

Here is the easy and fun part. Going to the top layer change the layer mode to see what effect you get. On my window computer I can click on the first mode Normal to highlight it and then use the scroll wheel to quickly go through the modes. You can also do this with the Mode highlighted then using the down arrow key to cycle through them.

Now you can see what the different modes can do with the two layers with colors. For example here is the top layer in the Pin Light Mode.

The Lighter Color Mode

Vivid Light

And last the Difference Mode.

Once you have an effect you like you can blur it or even add another layer and have a different Mode on that layer too. There really is no harm and lots of fun to be had with this.

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