Blending modes for blending backgrounds and textures

[southwestform]

I'm adding different photos as layers into portraits to be used as either background skies or just textures and I want to adjust the blending modes to blend them in and mask out the parts I don't need. What should I look for in my source portrait files and the sky/textures files to determine if they will be a good fit?  Are there any general guidelines regarding which blending mode works better for which type of photos?

Thanks

[davescm]

Hi

From your description it sounds like you may be misinterpreting blending modes, as the normal blending mode with a mask would achieve the simple background replacement you describe.

Blending modes are used to bring together the pixel properties of the foreground and background image to create a new property.

A description of how each blending mode works is in teh link below, but simple experimentation with a couple of gradients quickly shows the effect of each blending mode.

Blending modes in Adobe Photoshop

On the wider question of compositing, look at matching the lighting and shadows (direction and colour), the perspective of foreground and background and the colour saturation to make elements fit.

Dave

[JJMack]

Blending modes can help when you composite your portraits with a new background but the portraits would need to have a neural light background a replacement on top  blending like multiply may recover masked off hair..

[Nancy OShea]

Assuming your perspectives are all in good order,  see this tutorial by Jesus Ramirez on luminosity, saturation and color matching. 

How To Blend Images Together and Create Realistic Composites In Photoshop - YouTube

If your perspectives are not good, you need to work on that first.  No amount of blending can make up for mismatched perspectives.

How To Use PERSPECTIVE and VANISHING POINTS To Create AMAZING Composites In Photoshop - YouTube

[Marja de Klerk]

You can be very creative using blending modes. I suggest you also use adjustment layers to adjust colors or blur of specific layers. With these possibilities you can use any background you like!

For the portrait itself it would be nice if the portrait can be easily extracted, so you can remove the background.