Affinity Designer Multiply blend mode creates darker color even when using white

[melonboy123]

I might understand blend mode wrong. But I always believe when we set white pixel's blend mode to "multiply" they disappears. At least this is how photoshop handles it. I found this explaining multiply mode in photoshop https://theeagerlearner.com/your-big-friendly-guide-to-layer-blend-modes/

"Multiply – This is what we use most often when we want to make things darker. White is invisible, black is opaque & the grey is making things darker."

While on Affinity Designer, multiply "always producing a darker value." https://affinity.help/designer/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Layers/layerBlendModes.html?title=Layer%20blending

See https://imgur.com/a/fgCWOEC, left shadow has blend mode normal, and right shadow has blend mode multiply. The white pixel also makes the ground darker.

[Pšenda]

5 hours ago, melonboy123 said:

The white pixel also makes the ground darker

For me not.

[RNKLN]

Same here. I've never noticed the behaviour shown and described above. What's the output format?

[melonboy123]

this is strange, white object by itself works. But once I put something inside, the multiply blend mode start darken background.

[RNKLN]

For some reason i can't upload my screenshot, but i can confirm that i can replicate your situation. On the other hand, i have another example on the same canvas where everything works as expected.

Update: It looks like this is happening as soon as you have multiple underlying objects under the gradient rectangle.

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, melonboy123 said:

I put something inside

Here I would assume, that there may be a difference in the use of Groupings, or Clipping and Masking, which you probably use.

Try to put a circle and gradient to the Group.

[lacerto]

(...)

 

[lepr]

8 hours ago, Lagarto said:

Yes, it seems to be related to clipping along with a gradience. I am not sure if this is "as designed", or a bug:

(EDIT: With a a better screenshot, and .afdesign file)

clipped_multiply_with_gradience.afdesign

(So what seems to get multiplied when a gradience is used as a clipping object, is the start color of the gradience???)

EDIT2: I get the same behavior in Illustrator CS6.

 

 

Surely this is a bug. Well, I doubt that a developer would deliberately break non-Normal blending when a vector object contains a clipped child.

Here is a simple example showing that a gradient is not necessary and that vector objects (including Image objects) are afflicted but Pixel objects are not.

By the way, many blend modes are broken when a vector object contains an enabled clipped child, and the same problem existed in the 1.7.3 apps.

 

 

[lepr]

The app is incorrectly doing an extra blend of an object with the background when the object has a clipped child. I've tested this with various colours and blend modes.

 

object with no child

  expected result: object blend with background

  actual result: object blend with background

parent with clipped child

  expected result: (child blendC with parent) blendP with background

  actual result: (child blendC with (parent blendP with background)) blendP with background

 

[Pirachute]

Same problem here, on Windows 10...

I have a white layer that should clip the two layers in the bottom... I want to ad a "slight" shadow with the white layer making it slightly grey, but as soon as I put the other two layers inside it becomes very dark. It actually doesn't even make sense with any blending mode...

Any solutions for this??

Thanks

[lepr]

22 hours ago, Pirachute said:

Any solutions for this??

Welcome to the Affinity forums

Even if there was an acknowledgement of this thread from Serif, a fix for this bug is very unlikely to materialise, in my opinion.

There are workarounds, though.

If the clipping object is pure white with Multiply blend mode, then simply change its fill to none instead of white. 

Otherwise, enclose the clipping object in a Group and give the desired blending mode to the Group.

 

[Pirachute]

Thank you very much @anon2!

The layer should not be white, but slightly gray to create a shadow... I put it like this in the forum because in white the problem is quite easy to see (because with Multiply it should "look like" transparent and it doesn't).

I actually solved it with a similar workaround to what you describe. I removed the color from the parent layer and I added a white square inside it as child... with the parent being "multiply" and all children being normal blending mode.

Still, it's q pity this doesn't get Serif's attention, as these small things can be a very frustrating. When simple things don't work as expected and you have to spend hours trying to understand what you're doing wrong, just to learn in the end that it was a bug 😵... hehehe.

Thanks anyway for your help!

 

[Patrick Connor]

@Chris B

can you check that this has been correctly reported, and that the developers are aware please.

[Aftemplate]

On 6/24/2021 at 8:04 AM, Pirachute said:

Thank you very much @anon2!

The layer should not be white, but slightly gray to create a shadow... I put it like this in the forum because in white the problem is quite easy to see (because with Multiply it should "look like" transparent and it doesn't).

I actually solved it with a similar workaround to what you describe. I removed the color from the parent layer and I added a white square inside it as child... with the parent being "multiply" and all children being normal blending mode.

Still, it's q pity this doesn't get Serif's attention, as these small things can be a very frustrating. When simple things don't work as expected and you have to spend hours trying to understand what you're doing wrong, just to learn in the end that it was a bug 😵... hehehe.

Thanks anyway for your help!

 

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