How to combine image with a gradient? Or make it more featured in a different way

Question

I generate an abstract 128x128 image, that is in general two-color (it uses values scaled between "blue" and "white", or other similar color pair). I need to make the image more "featured".

Currently, I am blending a four color gradient (prepared in a separate 128x128 buffer) via techniques based on equations from gimp docs. The effects are not good – the gradient dominates over the source image.

How to add some "features" to an abstract image, in procedural way? Maybe you have some tested techniques?

EDIT: here is the image – based on Perlin Noise:

Answer 1

I have no real idea what you want, but you can probably rule out a number of blend modes, because they bias towards darker or lighter images. There aren't too many that take two images with full dynamic range and produce another image will full dynamic range.

Additionally, some of the blend modes are going to mostly alter the dark areas (blue regions in your image: Lighten only seems to be in this category), while others are only going to alter the light areas (white regions in your image: Hard light seems to do this).

Difference seems to do decently at producing dynamic images and altering both the colors of your source image:

If you ever need to scale down the contribution of the color texture, you can always just uniformly lighten/darken it (which you do depends on the blend mode you select).