Blend modes, and what each one is for

The same list appears in 4 other places, which is where most of the confusion starts:

• the Mode dropdown in the Options bar whenever a painting tool is active, such as Brush, Gradient, Paint Bucket or Clone Stamp
• the Blend Mode field in Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options, which also holds Fill Opacity and the Blend If sliders
• the Mode field in Edit > Fill and Edit > Stroke
• the Blending field in Image > Apply Image and Image > Calculations, where the maths is done channel by channel

What a blend mode does to the pixels under it

A blend mode does arithmetic between 2 things: the layer carrying the mode, called the blend layer, and everything already composited beneath it, called the base. The result replaces what you see. There is no hidden intelligence in it, no edge detection and no subject awareness, which is why the same mode behaves identically on a photograph, a scan and a flat colour fill. The formulas below are per channel, on a scale of 0 to 255 in an 8 bit file.

Two consequences follow from that table and they answer most practical questions. A dark texture on Multiply keeps its dark marks and throws its white paper away. A light effect on Screen, such as a lens flare shot against black, keeps the light and throws the black away. And a dodge and burn layer filled with 50% grey and set to Soft Light starts invisible, which is exactly the point: you paint the correction onto a layer that contributes nothing until you do.

The 6 groups, and the 4 modes that do most of the work

The 6 groups are separated in the dropdown by thin dividing lines, and the grouping is the cheat sheet. Normal holds Normal and Dissolve. Darken holds Darken, Multiply, Color Burn, Linear Burn and Darker Color, and every one of them can only make the base darker or leave it alone. Lighten mirrors it with Lighten, Screen, Color Dodge, Linear Dodge (Add) and Lighter Color. Contrast holds 7 modes from Overlay through Hard Mix and all of them pivot on 50% grey. Comparative holds Difference, Exclusion, Subtract and Divide. Component holds Hue, Saturation, Color and Luminosity, which split a layer into its colour and its brightness and let you take one without the other.

Of the 27, four carry the ordinary working day:

1. Use Multiply to lay a shadow, a stamp, a scanned drawing or a dark texture onto a lighter picture.
2. Use Screen to add light: a flare, a light leak, a dust plate, a fire or smoke element shot on black.
3. Use Soft Light at 20% to 40% opacity to add contrast and local shape without the harshness Overlay brings.
4. Use Color to change a colour and keep the original tone, which is the mode that makes recolouring survive close inspection.

Choosing between 2 modes that look almost the same

The difference between 2 similar blend modes is usually where they clip and how fast they get there. Overlay and Soft Light use the same pivot at 50% grey, but Overlay reaches pure black and pure white far sooner, so a portrait treated with Overlay loses shadow detail that Soft Light keeps. Screen and Linear Dodge (Add) both brighten, but Screen approaches white asymptotically while Linear Dodge (Add) simply adds and slams into 255, blowing highlights flat. Multiply darkens every channel, while Darken compares the two and keeps whichever is lower, so Darken can leave a colour shift where Multiply leaves a clean density. Color takes hue and saturation together while Hue takes hue alone, which is why Hue often leaves a recoloured object looking washed out.

The mode called Difference earns its place for one job that has nothing to do with looks: put 2 frames of the same scene on top of each other, set the top one to Difference, and nudge it with the arrow keys until the picture goes as close to black as it will go. Black means the frames are aligned to the pixel. Switch back to Normal and carry on.

Setting a blend mode on a brush rather than a layer

Setting a blend mode on a brush uses the Mode dropdown in the Options bar, not the Layers panel, and the two are independent. A brush set to Color paints hue onto whatever is already on the layer, which is the classic way to tint a black and white frame by hand. A brush set to Overlay with the foreground set to white and Flow at 5% is a controllable dodge that will not shift colour the way the Dodge Tool can.

The trap is the keyboard shortcut. Shift with + steps through modes, but if a painting tool is active it steps the tool's mode and leaves the layer alone. Press V for the Move Tool first, then cycle, and you will be changing the layer. Direct jumps exist too: Shift Alt N for Normal, M for Multiply, S for Screen, O for Overlay, using Option in place of Alt on macOS.

When the list is greyed out, and when the mode does nothing

A greyed out blend mode list has 3 ordinary causes, and none of them is a broken install. Check them in this order:

1. Check the layer: a locked Background layer has no blend mode. Double click it in the Layers panel to convert it to an ordinary layer.
2. Check the colour mode: Image > Mode should read RGB Color or CMYK Color. Indexed and Bitmap documents restrict the list, and 32 bits per channel restricts it further.
3. Check what is selected: an adjustment layer, a group or a channel selection each change which controls are live.

A mode that is available but appears to do nothing is usually behaving correctly. Screen over a pure white area cannot brighten it, because white is already the ceiling. Multiply over pure black cannot darken it. Dissolve at 100% opacity is pixel for pixel identical to Normal, and only shows its scatter when you drop opacity to something like 50%. And a blend mode on the lowest layer in the stack has nothing underneath to blend with, so it composites against transparency and looks unchanged.

One more misuse is worth naming. Setting a photograph to Multiply to knock out a white studio background looks like it works until there is a soft shadow, a wisp of hair or a reflection, at which point the subject goes semi transparent. Blend modes are not a masking technique; the selection route in Removing a background in Photoshop is, and Photoshop now does the first pass of it from the Contextual Task Bar in one click.

The same dropdown in Illustrator, in Elements, and in a German copy

Illustrator keeps blend modes in the Transparency panel, opened from Window > Transparency, and offers a shorter set of 16 rather than Photoshop's 27, so Vivid Light, Linear Light, Pin Light, Subtract and Divide have no equivalent there. Photoshop Elements carries the dropdown at the top of its Layers panel as well; check the list in your own copy before planning a job around a mode you have only seen named in a desktop tutorial. PaintShop Pro, and where it stands now, is the page for Corel's program, which keeps its own equivalent list under a different label; Corel has sold it since buying Jasc Software in October 2004 and still sells it with a free trial.

German language copies rename the modes rather than translate them literally, and 3 of them catch people out: Screen is Negativ multiplizieren, Overlay is Ineinanderkopieren, and Luminosity is Luminanz. Multiply is simply Multiplizieren. If you are following an English tutorial in a German install, matching by position in the dropdown is faster than matching by name, because the order of the 6 groups is the same.

If you want to try any of this without buying anything, the honest free routes are the ones set out on the free alternatives page: GIMP, which reached 3.0.8 on 24 January 2026, Krita at 5.3.2.1 from 1 June 2026, Photopea in a browser, and Paint.NET on Windows. Photopea opens PSD files, so a layered file built with blend modes will at least open. The free Photoshop app on iPhone, covered on Photoshop on a phone, carries layers, masks and compositing in its free tier. Where each of these operations lives is indexed on Photoshop, operation by operation.

Where to go next

PHOTOSHOPPhotoshop, operation by operationPHOTOSHOPRemoving a background in PhotoshopHow to remove a background in PhotoshopPHOTOSHOPPhotoshop on a phoneWhat actually worksPAINTSHOP PROPaintShop Pro, and where it stands nowWhat it is and where it stands now