Merge Modes Provide Solutions

I was reading through posts on Corel's support newsgroups yesterday and one of the regulars posted an old photograph and asked how the contrast could be improved. In short, the original was very washed out.

I took a quick shot at fixing the picture. I duplicated the image as a floating object in Corel PHOTO-PAINT and then applied a Multiply Merge Mode at 50% opacity. Others posted their solutions in the newsgroups. I wasn't the only one to use Multiply and there were several others who used Texturize. It just showed that a common solution to problems of this sort can be solved by using Merge Modes.

Soon after I had fixed the picture, I got a call from Pete McCormick and he told me of an image he had fixed that day. Once again the solution involved making a duplicate of the image and applying a Merge Mode.

Since most of my work is to prepare materials for training and not "real world" production, I sometimes forget about just how useful a particular feature can be to the average user. Merge Modes are one of those hidden gems and I don't think enough people are aware of their power. I am going to work on a tutorial that shows several examples of them in use so that you, the users, can more fully understand how they work and how powerful they can be to your workflow.

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