Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 Studio Techniques

Color Burn Mode

This mode is not easy to describe or understand, but can be very useful nonetheless. Just as with all the Darken blending modes, white doesn't do anything in Color Burn mode. Black will leave any red, green, or blue numbers that are 255 alone and force all others to zero. When you paint with a primary color (pure red, green, or blue), you'll end up with the amount of that primary color that was in the underlying image and nothing else. When you paint with a color that's made out of two primaries, Photoshop will strip the third primary color out of the underlying image. Here's where the goodies come in. Paint with shades of gray to darken and intensify the colors that are in the underlying image. This can work wonders for darkening ...