Layer blending

Blend mode types

Affinity Photo supports an impressive selection of different blend modes. The most commonly used blend modes are as follows:

• Normal—The default blend mode. The top pixels display over underlying pixels according to the level of top layer opacity.
• Multiply—The blending result is a combination of the top and bottom color at each pixel position, always producing a darker value.
• Screen—The opposite of Multiply, where the blending result is a combination of the inverse of the top and bottom color at each pixel position, always producing a lighter value.
• Overlay—Applies either Multiply or Screen blend mode, depending on the bottom color at each pixel position. If the bottom layer pixels are <50% gray, it multiplies; if >50% it screens.
• Divide¹—Lower layers are lightened based on luminance on the upper layer. White has no effect. Lightness is increased progressively by gray through to black.
• Color Burn¹—Darkens the bottom color pixels relative to the values of the top color pixels.

Other available blend modes include Darken, Linear Burn, Darker Color, Lighten, Lighter Color, Color Dodge¹, Add, Soft Light, Hard Light, Vivid Light, Pin Light, Linear Light, Hard Mix, Difference¹, Exclusion¹, Subtract, Hue², Saturation², Luminosity, Color², Average¹, Negation¹, Reflect¹, Glow¹, Contrast Negate and Erase.

¹ Not available in Lab16 mode.

² Not available in Grayscale mode.