Blending modes palette box

[Serenoa]

Is there any way in Elements7, when you are playing around trying different blending modes - that you can keep the selection box open as you click on different ones - instead of having to keep clicking on the little down arrow to reopen the choices?

TIA - Barbara

[whatnext]

if i understand your question, all you have to do is highlight the mode in the box, then press the down arrow and it scrolls you through all the modes and you see them happen on your page. hope this helps. i am sooooooo no techno. i'm still useing Elements 4!

[Serenoa]

As soon as I highlight one of the modes in the list (with my mouse) it applies the mode and immediately closes the list box. If I want to try a different blending mode, I have to open the list again and click on another choice. Maybe Elements 4 is different than 7. Or there is some option to check that I don't know about. Thanks for your reply.

[hguenthe]

Try holding Shift and then hit + or - to move up or down the list.

[Cassie Jones (1gr8muggle)]

Do as Heather suggested. If it's not working, make sure you have the Move tool active (or a non-drawing tool, so that it's actually changing it in the layers palette instead of the options bar for the tool).

[Serenoa]

Yea!! Thanks so much to Whatnext, Heather, and Cassie. Finally got it to work. This makes it so much easier than the awkward way I was doing it. I really appreciate the help.

Barbara

[anke]

I have the same problem in CS4, how do you do it there? The above didn't work when I tried it. It moved up and down, but didn't change the blending mode. It's really annoying!

[hguenthe]

Anke, as long as you are on the move tool (or other non brush tool) like Cassie suggests, you don't need to click into the blend mode box to change it, just try using the Shift +/-

I find that if I click into the box, then I get stuck in that move up/down but have to hit enter to have it actually change. If you don't click in there, it should just automatically begin shifting from mode to mode.

[anke]

It shifts through them all right, but it doesn't change the blending mode at all. they don't even get highlighted that way. Is there something else I need to do first maybe?

[Serenoa]

Anke - I struggled with this for several hours trying to get it to work and have the following observations on it:
- still not sure if I am doing it the most direct way, but now it at least works
- I highlight the layer I want to blend
- then I click on the box at top of the layer palette with the word "Normal" in it (the blending box opens and the list of modes appears)
- then I immediately click on the word "normal" again and the box closes, but now I can scroll through the blending choices with the down arrow and the choices are applied to the layout
- if the word "normal" is showing when you start, only the down arrow works, the scroll list doesn't wrap around - I made the mistake of hitting the up arrow a few times and thought it wasn't working

Hope this makes sense and helps.

Barbara

[anke]

Oh sweet! Thank you, that is working! I don't know why they had to change that, it worked so well in CS3! Yeah, I am happier now!!!