Blend modes versus blend ranges

So far in this chapter, we have been talking about blend modes; however, there are such things as blend ranges. A blend range differs from a blend mode in the following ways:

• You can target certain dark and light values of an image to blend only if they are part of that value range (say you only want the black parts to work with the Darken adjustment)
• You can create specialty curves to target these values, whereas blend modes apply to the entire layer without exception

So, in this section, we will be covering where to locate them, how to read the graphs they produce, and where we would actually use them in the world of editing.

Where do blend ranges show up?

Blend ranges show up in the Layers panel, toward the top:

• In Figure 8.17, we see a cog/gear icon next to the blend mode in the Layers panel, and this is where the blend ranges exist
• In Figure 8.17, we also see graphs that come up for blend ranges

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