How to apply a range of different effects in Photoshop, ranging from sharpening to more stylised results
Pixel-based layers in Photoshop are those that contain pixels of some kind – essentially anything P you copy from another image or image layer. This includes editing techniques that involve cloning or duplicating into empty layers. When possible, it’s often beneficial to use Adjustment Layers to apply effects, to keep file sizes small – but some techniques are either more effective the old-school way, or require a copy of the Background Layer to work at all.
We’re going to take a look at some of these techniques, where the shortcut Ctrl/Cmd+J when the Background Layer is selected is the key to success. If you already have Adjustment Layers and other cloning layers in place, you can still achieve these effects: you just have to make sure the layer at the top of the stack is selected, then press Ctrl/Cmd+Alt/
Option+Shift+E to merge all visible layers into a new layer at the top of the stack.
1 Cheat’s bleach bypass
Bleach bypass is an old darkroom technique. With the Background Layer active, press Ctrl/Cmd+J to duplicate the layer. Next, press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+U to desaturate the new layer and change the Blend Mode from Normal to Overlay. This will add transparency and contrast that reveals the colour from the underlying layer, while also bringing through the desaturation effect. To finish off, reduce the layer Opacity to the desired amount depending on what you prefer: I used a setting of 40% here.
2 Natural darkening
Duplicate the Background Layer and change the new layer’s Blend Mode from Normal to Multiply to darken the image. This will also increas
