so here we have a layer on top of that we have another layer let's turn that on it seems like it is destroying the image now if you simply decrease the opacity see what happens it is just making it more and more transparent as you begin to decrease the opacity however if you decrease the fill see what happens how is that happening it makes the image more and more interesting so here's the before here is the after fantastic isn't it so what is happening so let us rewind a little bit first under General circumstances opacity and fill tend to work the same so in this case here we have a beautiful scenery on top of that we have added some text but the scenery is way too bright and it's distracting the text so how do we make the text stand out Simply by adding a little bit of Blackness so just above the background layer we're going to create a fill layer all right now what is the fill layer you might ask it is an adjustment layer that fills so if you click on the adjustment layer icon if you look at the top group you see all of them are in a group this is one group that is one group right so at the top we have three adjustment layers solid color gradient and pattern they are fill layers what they do is create a layer that fills the canvas with either a solid color a gradient or a pattern so this time and let us choose solid color and we're gonna choose black all right now of course we don't want it to be completely black so we would decrease the opacity so as of now if we are decreasing the opacity to let's say 40 42 this is how it looks however if we decrease the fill as well to around 42 percent it looks the same so in general terms they work the same however under 2 and just two special circumstances Phil reacts differently as opposed to opacity and you can take advantage of this to create some incredible effects and we're going to do that in this video so make sure to download the project files now before we continue do know that we are talking about the difference between opacity and fill in the layers panel please don't get it confused with the brush tools opacity and flow that is a whole different thing and we will discuss it in a future lesson if you don't have the patience you can watch this video after this one let's start with the first condition where opacity and fill work differently and this brings us to the very beginning of the video and that is Special Blend modes now what do I mean by Special Blend modes so right here if we create a simple color layer or solid color adjustment layer by clicking on the adjustment layer icon and then let's choose solid color let us choose a color like this hit OK alright and in the previous lesson what did we learn let us not forget what is one of the most common ways we can make a layer interact with the other layers beneath it in various different ways and that is blend modes so if you go ahead and choose any of the blend modes like let's say overlay this is how the image would look like it allows this color to interact with the layer beneath in this case if you just decrease the opacity it makes it more and more transparent if you decrease the fill it does the exact same thing however there are eight Special Blend modes or in other words some mysterious blend modes and this is the list if you choose any one of these blend modes opacity and fill will work differently so let us choose one of them first of all let's choose a warmer color so I'm going to choose something like this and by the way we can change this color later so this my friend is the normal blend mode this is how an image would look like without altering anything and of course you would decrease the opacity to make it more and more transparent now if you choose one of the eight Special Blend modes and I'm gonna choose hard mix it makes the image look terrible if you decrease the opacity it makes it more and more transparent as with everything else however in this case since this is a special blend mode if you decrease the fill it controls the projection it decreases the intensity it changes how it interacts with the entire layer so let's say for this image I'm gonna go for a lower number like 20 and it's making it look incredible so here is the before here's the after and this my friend is one of the most important applications of this method and that is color grading let us go a little more advanced let's say I like this effect but not so much on the dark areas so how do we take this effect away from the dark areas we're going to use a New Concept here called blend if if you double click on the right hand side of the layer the layer style dialog box shows up and we will use some of these effects later but for right now we'll focus on this area called blend if it says right there blend if what it does is that it allows you to control the visibility of the layers according to the brightness levels doesn't make sense don't worry we're in this together so right now the effect is all over the image we want to take the effect away from the dark areas now the dark areas of where the dark areas of the layers that are lying underneath the selected layer so again let us revise that we want to take this effect away from where from the dark areas dark areas of what dark areas of the layer that lies under it and that is why we will work with the sliders of the underlying layer all right and to remove this effect from the dark areas of the underlying layer because this layer is lying underneath it we will take the slider of where it is dark to the right and as we do that have a look this effect is going away from the dark areas but then again this is very harsh how do we make the transition smoother we hold the ALT key or the option key click on the slider to break it apart and take it apart similarly if you don't want this effect in the bright areas you would do exactly the opposite so if you take the slider from the right to the left it takes it away from the bright areas now we want the transition to be absolutely smooth so these two sliders need to be as far apart as possible and as soon as we do that have a look at the effect hit okay so here's before blend if I'm going to press controller command Z the dark areas are absolutely crushed here's after it looks just wonderful so here's the before here's the after makes the image pop now in real world color grading I wouldn't even go this intense I would choose an opacity like maybe even 46 or 32 something like that and have a look here's the before here's the after very slight difference but makes a significant difference now a little experiment for you to try use the same technique to add one more solid color adjustment layer of a different color but this time add it only to the dark areas and how would we do that just a hint create a solid color adjustment layer use the blend mode or the fill you want to use and using blendif do just the opposite of what we did now while we are here let us understand the concept of blend if a little more so let's say you created a new layer and this is not an effect on an image this is just to understand and we create a gradient from black to white let us choose linear gradient and by the way I picked the gradient 2 right here picked linear gradient and picked black to white okay and we created a gradient like this if we double click on the right hand side of the layer if I wanted to take this layer away from the dark areas of the layers that lay under it I would move the sliders of the underlying layer all right it's taking it away from the dark areas of the underlying layer now it's taking it away from the bright areas of the underlying layer however if you work with the sliders of the current layer it will simply take the dark and the bright areas of the current layer away so right now if we work with this it just takes the dark areas of this existing layer if we do this only the bright areas of the existing layer so you get how plentif works now you can also take advantage of fill to create a fake sun and by fill I mean the fill right here and fake Sun at the top that didn't sound right and the way you do it is by simply creating a new layer by clicking on the new layer button right there take the brush take a soft round brush click on the drop down right there and choose the soft round brush make the brush a little larger you know how to make it larger or smaller use the bracket keys let us not forget and now let's choose a warmer brighter yellowish color so single click right here on the foreground color box and we're going to choose a color like this let's go with something like that that's a bright Sunshine color keep in mind we can always change it with the help of clipping masks we learned about it in previous lesson as well so I'm just going to dab right here don't dab in the corner where you want to add the sun dab somewhere in the middle so that you can move it later and adjust it or transform it so I'm just going to dab right over here now before doing anything I always recommend that you convert this layer into a smart object you know why we learned about it again in the previous lesson so that when we make it smaller or larger we don't lose details even though this is blurred it's a good practice to do every single time so right click on it and choose convert to Smart object one other thing you can do is go to filter convert for smart filters both of them do the exact same thing let us name this sun s-u-n now it's time for us to choose one of those eight blend modes and in here we're gonna choose colored Dodge now just to give you an idea this is the lighten group this is the Duncan group any blend mode you choose right here will only darken the image any blend mode you choose right here will only brighten the image that's the general idea so right here we're going to choose color Dodge it is one of the eight Special Blend modes right here now it doesn't look like it is doing much you can move it around it looks like a sun it's okay but it's not as great sun is something that is so bright that it blinds out stuff how do we make that happen so right now what is happening is that transparency of the layer is shaping the layer what do I mean by that let us change the blend mode to normal so right here in the middle it is very opaque and as we go away from the middle in this layer in the sun layer it becomes more and more transparent and that is shaping the layer but we don't want that to shape the layer we want the interaction of the sun with this image to shape the layer let's make the layer thumbnails a little bigger by right clicking on the empty space and choosing large thumbnails so we want the interaction to choose the shape of the layer and how do we make that happen first of all change the blend mode to color Dodge okay secondly you double click on the right hand side of the layer the layer style dialog box shows up and uncheck transparency shapes layer because we don't want the transparency to shape the layer instead we want the interaction of the layers with the layers beneath to shape the layer if an area is dark we want to show less of it if an area is bright we want to show more of it so if you uncheck that have a look what happens so here's the before right let's uncheck it have a look suddenly the treatment changes hit okay and now when you move it around have a look in the dark areas it looks like it's peeking through the tree and in the bright areas it's absolutely blinding out that area just like a real Sun so you can place it wherever you like again this does not have to be realistic if actually a sun was right here the light would be that way but then again we are creating art here as long as you're happy doing it and it looks good to you that's all that matters don't worry about one or two negative people in the comments they're always going to be there focus on the people who you love focus on the people who are positive and focus on the people who are pushing you to do amazing stuff and in a rare scenario if you find that you don't come across such a person well I'm here to tell you that you're gonna do amazing things and you're doing amazing things so I made the Sun a little smaller and right now if we change the fill have a look it changes the power of the Sun the power of the sun and the power of my hands which movie is that let me know so right here I'm gonna place the sun right here and change the fill accordingly to see what works now if you feel like you have chosen the wrong color for the sun don't worry about it simply create a solid color adjustment layer click on the adjustment layer icon and then choose solid color and you can choose whatever color you want hit ok now we want to apply this color just to this layer and how did we make it happen in lesson two we held the ALT key or the option key and clicked on the line between these two layers to create a clipping mask now you can double click on the symbol of the adjustment layer and change it to whatever you want real time so cool isn't it green blue maybe some aliens coming in so you can get creative with it so this color is fine with me hit OK and even before adding that it was okay so that is just to show you in case you want to change the colors now to add the glare we can take the help of Gray radiant fill remember we discussed fill layers so if you click on the adjustment layer icon we have three fills solid color we already used it gradient and pattern let us choose a gradient it fills the image with a gradient now this is the gradient which goes from color to transparent you can choose whatever gradient you want just single click right here and on the left hand side you can choose whatever color and on the right hand side we can choose whatever color let's say we choose green and this is just to understand it now at the top we have opacity control so on the left hand side the opacity is at 100 so the color right here is absolutely opaque but on the right hand side the opacity is zero so if we increase the opacity this is how the gradient is going to look again how do we change the color by double clicking on these sliders and you can change the color to whatever you want if you double click on the slider you can change the color to whatever you want just come on all right another way to do it is if you single click on the slider you can click on the color to change it from here so so many ways of doing the same thing in Photoshop you can even manually dial in the location so 26 is at 26 this is 78 and all the way on the right hand side is 100 so lots of different ways so we want to create a gradient like the sun on the left hand side we want a bright yellow color something like this and on the right hand side as it fades away it becomes a little bit reddish so select the slider click on the color and let's choose this red hit okay and also we want this to fade away right so as it gradually goes from yellow to Red it should also become transparent so click on the slider above which controls the opacity and let's decrease it to zero so this is what we want now this is a linear gradient and by the way here's a cool trick when you have the gradient fill properties open if you don't have open for now let's hit OK if you double click on it it's open right now so when you have it open you can click and drag and move it around any way you like so cool now you have different styles of gradients you have linear you have angle you have reflected very many styles this is reflected this is angle all right so we're going to choose radial because that's what we want and place it right above here all right you can also change the size by changing the scale right here you can also reverse the gradient if you click on it it will absolutely reverse the gradient all right once you're satisfied hit ok now I know this doesn't look right because it's making the sun darker and a lot of other things darker the only job of this glare is to brighten the image because it's a glare so what is the blend mode that we learned brightens we learned that multiply darkens screen brightens overlay adds contrast right so let us go ahead and choose screen and there you have your glare you can decrease the opacity if you wish but I like it at 100 and then you can control the Sun so I'm gonna make it slightly brighter at about 54 and that's how easily you can fake a sun in Photoshop now if we turn off the gradient we can move the sun anywhere we want so cool so I'm going to keep it right about here hidden and turn this on of course double click on it and move it around move it right about here and I would increase the scale a little more to about 150. now the entire image needs to be a little warmer to go with that style right and how do we make that happen just select the background layer and let's make a duplicate of that how do we make a duplicate by pressing Ctrl or command J now how do we warm it up before we do anything let us not forget go to filter convert for smart filters hit OK so that any filter we add we can change the values later let's go to filter and then camera raw filter we also touched upon it in the previous lesson and we want to make it just warm right so inside of the basic settings just increase the temperature that's all now when you do that it makes the entire image a little brighter so you might want to decrease the opacity to compensate for it okay and this image is looking too greenish let's make it a little more magenta by moving this slider The Tint slider towards magenta that's all so this is okay hit okay once you're satisfied now it goes with the entire theme so cool now you can use this technique to light anything up like bulbs even jewelry and we made a video about it you can check it out right here now these were just a few examples you can use this difference of Special Blend mode in fill to do a variety of other things just experimented all of what I'm showing you today is something that I learned just by playing around with Photoshop so just play around so here's another video that we did on adding color contrast which we added using a special blend mode and working with fill so play with it play with the eight Special Blend modes look how they react it doesn't only have to be a solid color adjustment layer it can be a texture too just experiment play with it have fun let us talk about the second and the final situation where the fill Works a little differently and that is layer Styles what do we mean by that so right here let's click on T the text tool and create some text on a different layer whenever you click it will create the text on a different layer if the image layer is selected so let's type in concrete let's make it bigger of course press Ctrl or command D and let's make it bigger like this all right that looks good now how do we Center it right now the move tool is selected within the three dots align to selection is selected always for me so that is why I just press Ctrl or command a and Center it or this is horizontal or vertical this is horizontal Center it horizontally and let's enter it vertically now if we decrease the opacity and the fill both are doing the same thing now if we add a layer Style by double clicking on the right hand side of the adjustment layer and there are lots of effects we can add let us talk about drop shadow so let's check drop shadow right here it creates a shadow now you need to select this to look at the properties of the drop shadow otherwise you would be like hey I checked drop shadow but I'm not seeing drop shadow properties trust me it happened with me a lot of times and that is why I'm sharing the mistakes I have done now look at how beautiful the shadow it has added you have all sorts of controls and you can play with it blend mode is set to multiply let's leave it at that for now let's keep it simple for now if you click here you can change the shadow color to whatever you want but since the blend mode is multiplying it will only darken so don't worry about it multiply the blend mode which darkens hit okay now opacity simply controls the opacity of the Shadow angle controls the angle of the Shadow you already know that use Global light you can check this when you add multiple shadows and you want all of those Shadows to use the same angle so let's say I added another drop shadow right here and the distance of it is a little away and it's like this it's with a different opacity so since use Global light is checked whenever I move the angle it changes the angle of this soft Shadow and also the hard Shadow at the back so that is why it's important yes you can add multiple drop Shadows let's delete one of them so with this one selected click on the delete button right there now you can of course control the distance of the Shadow you can control how soft the shadow is the more you increase the size the softer it becomes and you can increase the spread to make it more and more dense so I usually keep it zero most of the times unless I need it so that was the basics of drop shadow but is this how I change the distance and the angle of my Shadows of course not once you're in the drop shadow settings watch this you can take the cursor click and drag the shadow wherever you want and accordingly the angle and the distance changes pretty cool isn't it so I'm going to place it right about here decrease the size to about this and hit ok now if you decrease the opacity everything becomes more and more transparent however if you decrease the fill the shadow stays the same and the main layer material that becomes transparent and you can use this technique to create a variety of effects play with drop shadow in this case I'm just going to make it a little softer so that it shows up at the top like this and of course we have to follow the angle of the light so in this wall or Texture the light is coming from right here so we have to follow that angle and I think the angle is pretty proper on top of that we can even add something like bevel and emboss so if you check bevel and emboss make sure you select it by the way and there you have it look at the effect now you can control the depth like this you can control the size like this just play with these it will make sense now you should definitely match the lighting the light is coming from right here so set the angle of the light accordingly like that and there you are so I'm going to decrease the size keep it like this and that looks fantastic hit okay and there you go and if you move it around look at it it's surreal isn't it so I'm Gonna Keep it right here and this is uh one of the effects you can do but the difference between opacity and film and again if you decrease just the opacity the whole thing becomes more and more transparent if you decrease just the fill the layer Style just stays the way it is and everything else becomes transparent so those my friends are the differences between opacity and fill I hope you enjoy the projects and follow along just to give you a quick revisions opacity and fill in most general terms would react the same way what worked the same way however there are two special scenarios where fill Works differently as opposed to opacity number one is when you choose one of those eight Special Blend moons if you choose them Phil controls the projection it feels as if it's interacting with the layer whereas opacity just makes it more or less transparent the second situation is is when we use layer Styles if you decrease the opacity it makes the whole thing more transparent but if you decrease the fill it keeps the layer style intact so that's pretty much it for this video I hope it helped you and if it did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss any other future tips tricks or tutorials I would like to take this moment to thank all of these nice and amazing people for supporting Pixel Perfect on patreon and helping keep pics imperfect free for everybody forever and making this series possible this is a free series all throughout I hope this helps you because I'm having a blast teaching you thank you so much again for watching I'll see you in the next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] for you