‘Tis the season, my beloved ghosts and goblins, for Deeeeke’s Techneeeeks to celebrate Deke’s favorite holiday (when it comes to creating graphics), Halloween. So this week’s free episode is the start a poster project designed so that should you have to leave your home for a Halloween-related emergency, you can set out a bowl of treats for the tricksters, and ensure (through fear of course) that each visitor only takes one.

First, we’ll need an appropriate Master of Manner-minding Candy Keeper, and Deke found this guy hanging out with our unsuspecting friends at Dreamstime.com (about which you can learn more and get deals by clicking on the image).

Next, Deke sets this dour demon on top of an orange fill layer and sets the blend mode so that the Halloween appropriate color scheme emerges as you can see up top.

Note that in this video you’ll also see a couple of new Photoshop CC 2019 features along the way: The on-the-fly blend mode preview and using Ctrl-Alt-Z (Command-Option-Z) to toggle history states for comparison. (Learn more about the latest Photoshop release by checking out this New Features course from Deke at LinkedIn Learning. It’s completely unlocked this week.)

And if you’re a member of LinkedIn Learning (or Lynda.com), Deke’s got an exclusive movie this week in which he shows you how layer effects, opacity settings, and (again) blend modes work together with some creepy typefaces to develop our conscience-haunting message.

Deke’s Techniques, where the onset of Autumn means “time to start figuring out the Halloween episode.” (Here’s a trick that’s a treat, check out these episodes and articles from Halloweens past.)