The Layer Mode Multiply

In this film Karsten Franke gives us a video tutorial for the most widely used blend mode in Photoshop, the multiply blend mode.

Franke demonstrates with practical step-by-step instructions how simple and quick it is to retouch photos. In particular, when you have an overexposed or old, washed out photo, you can duplicate the photo on a new layer and set it to multiply, then adjust the opacity level of the new layer until the darker values are visually what you are looking for— the result is a darker picture.

In multiply mode, the layer is multiplied against the lower layers and the result is composed onto those layers. White pixels will result in no change to the lower layers, a black pixel will change a lower layer to black, and a gray pixel will darken the color of the layers below. So anything other than white darkens the result. The multiply blend mode is probably one of the most important blend modes in Photoshop, for basic photo retouching or special effects.