Multiply by pure black and you will turn your image black. Screen with pure white and you will turn your image white. Obviously.
Soft Light by 100% black and 100% white and this is as far up or down asyou can push the image.
It looks a lot like what happens when you multiply the layer by itself (square it) or screen it over itself (kinda sorta like square-rooting it). I know the math is not the same between Soft Light and gamma correcting by 2 or (1/2) - but it looks pretty similar, don't you think?
At the moment, this is how I picture Soft Light acting when I want an approximate mental image.
Here is Overlay by 100% black and 100% white. This is as far as the Overlay blend mode can push an image.
It looks an awful lot like a self-multiply or a self-screen 3 layers deep. I know a gamma correction of 3 or (1/3) is not the mathematical definition of the Overlay blend mode, but it sure seems to approximate the look, no?
At least this experiment works at the black and white extremes. I haven't done enough testing to see if it falls apart significantly when the value of the channel being screened is a gray well between 0% and 100%
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