Discover how to adjust and blend elements in your graphic design work to create a seamless and visually appealing background. This article delves into the process of selecting layers, adjusting opacity, and manipulating image positions to achieve a balanced design.
Key Insights
- The article details the process of revealing and hiding layers in a graphic design, using the example of a 'man on a mountain' image. The image is adjusted vertically to reveal more of the mountain, and the opacity is modified to balance the vibrancy of the image with the overlay text.
- It's important to maintain the proportions of an image when rescaling it, as discussed in the context of adjusting an image to fit the width of an artboard. The article advises maintaining the shift while rescaling to prevent distortion.
- The article further explores the blending of images by manipulating the opacity of a 'paint' layer and changing the blending mode within the transparency panel. This allows for a unique blend of the images and enhances the overall design.
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In this video, we will continue working with our background. In the previous video, we created this artboard background with our sunset layer. For now, let's hide our sunset layer by clicking the eye icon to the left of sunset, and instead, let's reveal the 'man on mountain' layer.
With this layer selected, click to the right of 'man on mountain' to see that we have a man on a mountain looking at the horizon. Currently, the mountain he's standing on is partially covered up. To fix this, with 'man on mountain' selected, simply click and drag while holding shift to ensure we drag only vertically. Then, drag it up to reveal more of the mountain he's standing on.
Additionally, feel free to rescale your image while holding shift to maintain the proportions. In this case, I'll resize it to the width of our artboard. This image currently has the same issue as our last image: it’s a bit too vibrant and strong, making the text above hard to see. To fix this, we'll again select the background image. Be sure that when you click on it, you're not selecting the clipping group and all its elements. Instead, only select 'man on mountain' by clicking to the right.
We can see a blue square to the right of 'man on mountain, ' indicating that this is the only one selected. We will then change the opacity. Let's set the opacity of 'man on mountain' to 30 and hit ENTER.
I like the look of this—it’s not too strong, and we can clearly see the text. However, we can still see the image and what's beneath it.
Now, let’s add one more change to our image. We will now reveal and blend the paint layer into our image. To do this, we first need to make it visible by clicking the eye icon to the left-hand side and selecting the paint image by clicking to the right of 'paint.'
We will drag it to the right to fill the entire artboard. Although this has skewed our image, it's already a little abstract, so I'm not concerned with manipulating the image too much.
Next, we need to adjust the opacity of this image. With it selected in our layers panel, we will go to opacity, double-click, set it to 40, and hit ENTER. As we can see, with lower opacity, some of 'man on mountain' is starting to show through.
Let’s lower the opacity a bit more. Rather than typing it, we will click the drop-down and drag it lower. As we release, we can preview this. I like it at 27%.
Feel free to change it to whatever you prefer.
Here, we can see some of the mountain behind as well as the paint image on top. While this looks good, let’s explore another way to blend these two images. With the paint layer selected, instead of just changing the opacity value, let’s also adjust the opacity in the transparency panel by clicking 'opacity.'
From here, we can change the blending mode from 'normal, ' which only adjusts opacity, to other blending modes. As we click through these, we’ll see how each blending mode changes how the two layers are blended together. Each mode does this differently, so feel free to change it to the blending mode you prefer.
I think I like the look of 'Difference' the best, so I’ll click outside. The background has really come together here.
Let’s now save our work using CTRL + S on the keyboard. In the next video, we will do a couple of touch-ups and finalize our website wireframe. See you in the next video!