Photoshop’s most underrated and least known tool, according to a professional photographer

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most used programs for the world of photography, and it has many unknown or forgotten functions. The most underrated tool it has is called ‘Blend If’ and we find it within the Layer Styles.

This tool surprises everyone who starts using it. The problem is that it is very hidden and it is not easy to understand what it is for. But once you discover it, you can’t stop going to her to solve common problems in the world of developing.

Merge if it is, the unknown Adobe Photoshop tool

Mastering Adobe Photoshop is not easy. It has so many tools with so many variants that it is impossible to know them all. In the end you stay with what you usually use and it allows you to go fast. Well, Merge if it is allows you to quickly and efficiently put an end to the terrible halos that we get when we work on our photography by zones.

Surely if you know a little about this program you will have come across them from time to time. To avoid them we have to go to blurs, luminosity masks, paint a thousand times with the Brush tool so that it is not noticed and in the end we leave it as impossible or we have finished with the hours of the day only with the review.

With the Blend if it is tool, in addition to being able to change the skies with amazing ease or remove dark circles, to give two examples, it allows you to make a selection, darken or lighten the object and then, with this tool, make the halos disappear in a instant.

• We develop the photo to adjust the lights and shadows. A good way to do this is with my ten-step method.

• Now I select the eagle with the lasso tool. No need to be precise. If we want, we have other tools at our disposal.

• Go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels menu and lighten the beautiful bird by moving the white slider to the left.

• Next, with the layer mask selected, we go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur to blur the edges of the selection. We have to raise the value of the blur to the point that the edges of the selection are not visible.

• And since we are going to see halos, we go to the menu Layer>Layer Style>Blending Options. There, at the bottom of the window, we find the Merge If It Is tool. It’s a shame it’s so hidden.

• To remove the halos, we click on the white Underlay Layer slider and drag it to the left until the halos disappear. And when we don’t see them, we alt/Opt+click to break it and make the effect more natural. In each photograph it will be different (it will depend on the background).

Suddenly we have removed the halos and we managed to have our eagle clearer, in just a few seconds and without having spent much time. For this reason, Merge if it is It is the most undervalued and unknown tool, for me, of all those that exist in Adobe Photoshop.