Blend modes
The fourteen ways a layer can combine with what is underneath it, from Multiply to Erase, and how a group keeps that blending contained.
Every layer has a blend mode, Normal by default. Set it in the Layers panel header, or in the Blend row of the Properties panel's Layer section. Both lists are the same fourteen entries and both preview the mode live as you hover it in the open dropdown. Dismissing the dropdown without clicking puts the old mode back; clicking commits it as one undo step.
The Layers panel combo writes only when exactly one layer is selected. The Properties panel row applies to the whole selection.
The modes
| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| Normal | Draws the layer straight over what is below, with no interaction |
| Multiply | Multiplies the two colours: whites vanish, everything else darkens. The shading default |
| Screen | The inverse of Multiply: blacks vanish, everything else lightens. Good for light and haze |
| Overlay | Multiplies the dark half of the backdrop and screens the light half, raising contrast |
| Darken | Keeps whichever of the two colours is darker, channel by channel |
| Lighten | Keeps whichever of the two colours is lighter, channel by channel |
| Color Dodge | Brightens the backdrop toward the layer colour, with a hard blow-out at the top end |
| Color Burn | Darkens the backdrop toward the layer colour, crushing the shadows |
| Hard Light | Overlay with the roles swapped: the layer decides whether to multiply or screen |
| Soft Light | A gentler Overlay that lifts or lowers the backdrop without hard clipping |
| Difference | The absolute difference between the two colours. Identical colours become black |
| Exclusion | A lower-contrast Difference that leaves midtones grey rather than dark |
| Plus | Adds the two colours together and clips at white. Brighter and flatter than Screen |
| Erase | Removes the backdrop wherever the layer has alpha, instead of drawing anything |
Erase
Erase is the odd one out: it does not draw the layer, it takes the layer's alpha out of whatever is beneath. Paint a shape, set it to Erase, and it becomes a hole.
Because it removes rather than adds, Erase only makes sense with the right things beneath it. Put the layers you want punched through and the Erase layer together inside one Group, and the erasure is contained by that group. Everything outside it is untouched.
How a group isolates blending
A parent is rendered into its own isolation buffer as soon as any of its direct children uses a mode other than Normal. Its children blend against each other inside that buffer, and the finished buffer is then composited into the scene using the parent's own opacity and blend mode.
This is a general rule rather than a special case for Erase, and it is the lever you use to control reach. Group a Multiply shadow with the character it belongs to and it only darkens the character; leave it ungrouped and it darkens everything behind it as well.
- Select the layers that should blend together, including the blended one.
- Press Ctrl+G to group them.
- Leave the group itself on Normal, so the finished result drops into the scene unchanged.
Animating a blend mode
Blend mode is keyframeable. It has its own Blend sub-track in the Timeline and its own auto-key channel, which is off by default. Arm Blend in Edit ▸ Auto-Key Channels, or key it by hand from the sub-track. Because a blend mode has no in-between values, the keys hold and then switch.
Blend modes inside a layer effect
Several layer effects (Color Overlay, Gradient Overlay, both shadows and both glows) carry their own Blend setting, which decides how that one effect combines with the layer it is drawn on. That list offers the same modes minus Erase, and it is not keyframeable.