Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 Studio Techniques

Dissolve Mode

The first blending mode is called Dissolve, and although it might be useful to some people, it's the one that I use the least out of the whole collection. It only affects areas that are partially transparent. All it does is take areas that are partially transparent and transform them into a scattered spray of solid pixels. As a result, those areas end up looking noisy (Figures 13.2 and 13.3). I do see the Dissolve blending mode used on occasion for product packaging, usually to create a noisy-looking shadow or glow around some text. You can accomplish this quite easily by adding a Drop Shadow or an Outer Glow layer style to a layer and setting its blending mode (in the Layer Style dialog box) to Dissolve (Figure 13.4). It's not ...