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Cycling through Layer Blend Modes (part 1)

 

Sometimes it’s useful to quickly cycle through your blend modes to see which one works best.

Manually clicking on each one just isn’t quick, so try this: Click on the Blend Mode list in the top left of the Layers panel to select a blend mode.

Then press Shift + (plus key) to cycle down the list and Shift – (minus key) to go back up.

5 Comments

  1. Rommel Miraflores said on — April 2, 2009 @ 10:19 am

    You can also just click and highlight the blend mode field, then scroll through the various modes using the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard.

  2. Bill said on — April 2, 2009 @ 5:07 pm

    Great tip! Thanks.

  3. Erin said on — May 2, 2009 @ 7:19 pm

    Rommel – I’ve always used that method in CS3. It makes life so easy!

    I recently upgraded to CS4 and I have to manually select each one…what a pain! Unfortunately the Shift + (-) method doesn’t work. Any other ideas?

  4. Linda said on — March 25, 2010 @ 9:24 pm

    Make sure you’re in the Move tool before Shift +’ing to scroll thru the Blend modes…

  5. Cole said on — April 3, 2010 @ 7:06 pm

    arrow keys are great for cycling with CS3/Windows but not CS4/Mac…option key +/+ or -

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Create A Composite Layer

If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.

Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith

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