Experiment With Blending Modes to Enhance Poster Designs

Working with transparency settings in #Adobe InDesign can elevate your poster creations to a whole new level.

In particular, experimenting with blending modes can not only enhance a main image, but it can really make typography stand out in poster design as well.

In this #tutorial, I'll take you through the steps on how to add a Halftone Color filter to you image in Photoshop, before bringing it into InDesign and added a colour blending mode to it.

Add A Halftone Filter in Photoshop

1. Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue and Saturation.

2. Slide the Saturation setting all the way to the left until the image is completely saturated — or black and white. Click OK.

3. Go to Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone

4. Set the Max Radius anywhere between 5-12 pixels. Experiment with this setting to see what works best with your specific image

5. In the four Channel fields, change the default settings to 50 throughout. This will give you a nice pixelated halftone effect.

6. Save and close your image

Let's shift over back to InDesign, where I created an A4-size print document. Poster sizes vary but can start anywhere from Letter and go up to 18" X 24".

Adding a Blending Mode

1. Select the Rectangle Frame Tool and draw a box that will match the same size of your image. Select a colour fill for your shape. In this case, I used Blue. Use your alignment tools to centre the box to your page.

2. Create another Rectangle Frame Tool shape that matches the size of your colour frame. If you are working in layers, be sure that the Image is placed over the rectangle shape.

3. Open your Effects panel, by going to Window > Effects and with the image selected, choose Overlay from the Blending Modes dropdown list. You can experiment with other of the selections in the first group, such as Multiply or Screen, to get the best result specific to your main image.

4. Still in the Effects panel, use the Opacity slider to the right of the Blending Mode option to pin-point the exact transparency to your liking.

5. Lock the main image layer and colour overlay shape and start adding your type and other content.