Rendering: Faster, Processor! - Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6 - page 344

Figure 12.22, cont'd

Notice how the lower Image input socket has a white rectangle beside it. Unless you connect another
actual image channel to that socket, the node will use the color in the rectangle as its input. LMB on the
white swatch to bring up the color picker, and choose a bright
orange. The preview in the compositor's background casts
orange. This is because the node is blending the orange color
from the secondary input with the image from the upper input,
at 50% strength, in regular mix mode. The Fac (factor) control
determines the mix percentage. The pop-up menu that defaults
to Mix contains all of the blending modes that we went over
in Chapter 7.

If you like, you can raise the Fac value to 1.0 to see orange
take over the whole image, or drop it to 0.0 to see just the
original render. Our goal, though, was to provide a nice col-
orization of the image. Simply mixing orange at 50% strength
ruins the contrast of the original. Switch the mix type to Soft
Light . This is the sort of work that Soft Light mixing was
built for. You can turn the Fac control up to 1.0, and the
effect is still very nice. In fact, pump it up to 5.0 (the max)
and you get a nice, stylized look. Contrast is retained, and
even some of the original color scheme. Figure 12.24 shows Figure 12.23 The Mix node.