Filmora 9 Creative Blend Mode Tricks to Try 

Hey, do you guys know about blend modes? You might have found them in Filmora 9 or any other photo editing software and wondered "what are they for?" If you've ever tried applying them, the results might have looked extreme or kind of weird. You want to know how these blend modes can actually be creative and practical? Hey everyone, It's JJ from Filmora, here to empower your inner video creator.

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If you apply a layer or an image in Filmora 9, you can apply a blend mode on the top layer so that you can change the way the two layers interact with each other.

I'm going to show you four creative ways on how to use blend modes and explain why they work. If you have a black piece of text or a black logo on a white background you can spice it up by using blend modes. First, you need to find a video you want to fill the text with or use as a background.
You can use actual video footage or find an exciting background pattern like I'm using in this example. Drag your text into video track 2 and your video into video track 3. 

Then, double click on your footage to open up the image menu and look under the compositing menu to find the blend modes. The two blend modes we're going to focus on are linear dodge and multiply.
They're usually thought of as opposites because one removes black pixels from the layer it's applied to and the other removes the white pixels. If we apply linear dodge to the video footage you'll see how the black pixels of the text vanish and are replaced by the video underneath. 

Now I have a more visually interesting piece of text. This is a great effect to use on a logo or our YouTube intro. The same goes for multiply. If I apply multiply you'll see how the black pixels of the text are unchanged, but the white pixels of the background vanish.

Overexposure is when you have too much white in a clip or image. You can fix this using colour correction or if you want a quick fix you can use the multiply blend mode. This is the same blend mode we use in the previous trick that removes white pixels from a layer. Drag your overexposed image or footage into your timeline twice; once into the video track 1, and once it to the video track 2.

Make sure it's lined up to overlap itself perfectly, and then double click on the clips and track 2 to return to the compositing menu. Apply the multiply blend mode and the overexposure of your final image is instantly reduced. In this trick, we're going to change this overcast sky to a starry night sky using the blend mode darkens. When you apply "darken" to a clip, it analyzed each overlapping layer and keeps whichever is the darkest.

So if you layer an image on top of a white background and apply dark then nothing would happen. If you layer an image on top of a black background and apply "darken", your image would disappear. That's why you can use darken to substitute a darker sky. This works best of any object like trees or people against the sky are darker than the new sky that you want to add.

Otherwise, they'll disappear too. Here, I've got this video of palm trees against an overcast stormy sky and I want to change that to this starry sky. I've already got them in the timeline. So I just chose "darken" from the drop-down menu and there you go. If you're using a clip where you only want darken to affect the sky part of your image and not some of the things under the sky, you can combine the darkened blend mode with an image mask.

Go to sample colors and add the white background to the first video track. Apply "darken" to your main footage, then after you save, go to the effects tab and find the image mask in the utility folder. Apply it to your new sky, and then double click on the new sky so you can edit the effects you just added. Choose the mask where you want the portion of the bottom of your clip to cut off and then play with the Y slider to get it to the height you want.

If you're trying to sync two identical clips, sometimes it's tricky to see if you've got them exactly right. The blend mode difference could help with that. Double-click on your top layer and apply difference. If you've lined up two identical frames, the screen will turn black. If you're seeing dashes of white or color, those represent areas where the two images are different.

Keep working on lining the clips until you see black and then turn off the blend mode by unchecking the box next to the compositing. And there you have it: four creative ways to use blend modes without making your image look strange. But sometimes maybe you want to embrace the strange. For example: if you're making a music video or a horror montage, sometimes layering blend modes together can give you an awesome creative look. 

Save Time Editing With Auto Ripple 

Video editing takes a lot of time and one of the biggest time-wasters is all the manual clicking-and-dragging we have to do. Not only is it tiring, but I'm often not very precise, causing some clips to be cut off or worse, leaving a black space in between two clips. With Auto Ripple, a whole new feature to Filmora9, that tedious task is now history.

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Hey everyone, it’s Elliot from Filmora, here to empower your inner video creator! Welcome to 2 Minute Tip, a series where we're going to teach you a video editing tip in two minutes or less- because your time is valuable.

So without further ado let’s get on to today's topic. Auto Ripple All right starts the timer... Here's a little project I'm working on. I have a lot of footage and my video is getting out of control. It's too long and I want to get rid of some clips. I delete them and suddenly there are gaps in my video Without Auto Ripple, I'll have to drag and drop all the remaining clips and align it that is going to take way too long.

I'm busy. I don't have time for that. Let's use Auto Ripple. You can find the Auto Ripple feature which is shaped like a chain in Filmora9 on the top left corner of the timeline. If you see a slash through it, that means it’s inactive. So let's give it a click and activate it.

Now let's start cleaning up my video with Auto Ripple. I don't want this particular clip anymore. So I'm going to select it and hit delete. The following clips will then move forward to fill in the gap saving me the time it would have taken to drag and drop.

Multiply that and you will save yourself a lot of time and prevent a lot of mistakes. If you're using markers to mark certain areas of your video and don't want them to move when you delete a clip with Auto Ripple, make sure that it is marked on the timeline and not the clip.

You could confirm that if you see the marker at the top of the timeline. If the marker is attached to the clip, it will move whenever a preceding clip is deleted with Auto Ripple in effect. There you have it that is how you use Auto ripple to save time while editing. Is there a video editing challenge that is too complex or is taking too long?