Best way to make a multi-colored Outer Glow Effect?

[Altarior]

Hi yall,

I've been using Affinity Photo for some years and been loving it overall. But now I'm running into this thing and I'm not sure what the best way is to go about it. Essentially, I'd like to add an Outer Glow FX to a Pixel layer, but I'd like it to be multi-colored. The easy way would be to simply add a second, third and fourth Outer Glow effect, but the Outer Glow (and Inner Glow for that matter) do not have the "+"-button, so I can't duplicate the effect.

Right now the best work-around I found is to group the layer, and then add an Outer Glow effect to the group as well. I'll need to make as many groups as I need colors in my Glow effect. (I'll attached a video showing a very quick example of what I mean) But this is kind of a messy way of ding it.

I've also tried using multiple Outline effects, as the Outline does have the "+"-button. This almost achieves the same thing, but the color transition is always solid and I want it to be gradient.

Is there a better way of achieving a multi-colored Outer Glow effect? Or can I perhaps put in a feature request for a "+"-button on the Outer Glow effect somewhere and cross my fingers for it to be added in a future update?

Thanks in advance!

 

(Edit: Got some great responses so far! I'll try out all the ideas later and see what works best for my project. Thanks, everyone!)

 

[Ldina]

@Altarior It's probably easier to do in Designer, but here's one way to do it. 

1. I set Photo to use a Transparent background as a start. Document > Transparent Background.
2. I made a selection of my object and put it on its own layer. Area outside of the object is transparent.
3. Duplicate that layer 4 times, once for each colored 'outer glow'
4. Use a paintbrush to color each layer, checking "Preserve Alpha" so as not to paint on transparent pixels.
5. Use the move tool to resize each layer as desired.
6. Add a Live Gaussian Blur above all four colored 'glow layers" and set the blur as desired.
7. Add a Fill Layer to the bottom of the stack for a background color. 

It's totally adjustable. You can change the size, position, layer order, opacity, blur, blends modes, etc, at any time. If you want, you can use a different blur amount for each layer by nesting live gaussian blur adjustments to each layer individually. Not sure if this is what you are after.

[lepr]

7 hours ago, Altarior said:

Outer Glow (and Inner Glow for that matter) do not have the "+"-button

Outer Shadow has the "+" button, and Outer Shadow with offset 0 is the same as Outer Glow when all of the controls they have in common are matching.

[Pšenda]

5 hours ago, lepr said:

Outer Shadow has the "+" button

... alternatively (instead of creating copies of objects) you can wrap the object into multiple Groups, and modify each Group with a combination of different fx.
P.S. which I see the OP does too 🙂

[lepr]

5 hours ago, Pšenda said:

... alternatively (instead of creating copies of objects) you can wrap the object into multiple Groups, and modify each Group with a combination of different fx.
P.S. which I see the OP does too 🙂

The whole point of the thread was that the OP is currently doing that as a workaround but specifically doesn't want to do that!

[thomaso]

14 hours ago, Altarior said:

Is there a better way of achieving a multi-colored Outer Glow effect?

I am not sure if it's a better way but a different one with a multi-colour gradient applied as contour Outline FX -> Outside -> Contour -> Gradient (i.e. no need to blur separately). Unfortunately the colours don't blend properly (an Affinity issue also known from other situations) and it requires some fiddling to set the radius + reduce the banding (actually I didn't see a difference when each gradient colour got its Noise set to 100).

[Pšenda]

31 minutes ago, lepr said:

The whole point of the thread was that the OP is currently doing that as a workaround but specifically doesn't want to do that!

I know, it was more of a response to a previous post - "Duplicate that layer 4 times, once for each colored 'outer glow'".