Participant

Question

Color mixing mode for a layer broken?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 25, 2023
2 replies
524 views

Ok, either i dont get soemthing or the color mixing mode for any layer is comepletly broken.

Every time i set a layer form "normal" to "color" it just burns out the texture and bumps up the brightness by 90% and turns almost every layer white.

And its not like it started now, it always was broken, no matter the version it never worked, so far i just never used it.

But i gotta ask, is there a way to actually make it work?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Cyril Dellenbach

Community Manager

Hi @sebastians47718172,

Thanks for your patience.

As you mentioned in your message, Substance Painter has always blended color this way, because it isn't a bug, but a different color conversion than what other software on the market do (in particular Photoshop, which people are really used to).

The color blending mode isn't broken and works as it should,

but in specific scenarios such as your example, the way Painter makes the conversion will become an obvious downside.

Best regards,

Cyril Dellenbach (Micro) | QA Support Artist | Adobe

davescm

Community Expert

Hi Cyril

Thanks for looking at this. Are you able to give any insight on how it does work in Substance Painter?

In most software I use, not just Photoshop, Color blend mode uses Hue and Saturation from the upper layer and Luminosity ( or Value) from the lower layer. Hence duplicating a layer and using color blend mode on the upper layer has no effect on the viewed image. In Painter it clearly works differently in practice (as do the 'equivalent' Value, Saturation and Tint blend modes').

The Painter documentation just states they use HSV and work as we think they would work i.e. a duplicate layer would show no difference. H&S from one layer and V from the other.

In order to be able to use these blend modes predictively, it would be good to understand how Painter's version of Colour, Saturation, Value and Tint blend modes actually work.

Thanks

Dave

Cyril Dellenbach

Community Manager

Hi Dave,

Sorry for the delay in response, these past weeks have been pretty busy.

To make it simple, you should expect these blending modes to act (mostly) as any other software, but our blending is done in another color space, creating slightly different values.

When you're watching your textures on the 3D model, those are (natively) shown in a SRGB color space. But when you're blending layers together, the SRGB maps will be converted into a Linear RGB color space (for accuracy), before converting the result once again in SRGB.

With the blending modes Value, Tint, Saturation and Color, there is another color space conversion (HSV), and all these changes can result with slightly different values, which can become very obvious in specific scenarios.

Tell me if you need anymore details.

Best regards,

Cyril Dellenbach (Micro) | QA Support Artist | Adobe

davescm

Community Expert

I'm not seeing that here in v9.0.0 on Windows 11.

Color blend mode is using the Hue and Saturation from the upper layer and the luminosity from the layer(s) below - as I would expect.

What version of Painter are you using, what operating system and, in project configuration, what Color management settings?

Dave

S

sebastians47718172Author

Participant

Every version.

Its broken, it was always broken, at lest since i started using substance 4 years ago.

I mean even a simple test, add a white layer in color mode over any texture, it will completly destroy the values, its not even subtle, makes using it for painting stuff up inpossible as you can see my every brush stroke.

Again, maybe i dont get something? Some button somwhere?

davescm

Community Expert

Thanks for the test - I can replicate that and it does indeed appear broken.

I also tried duplicating the grey gradient layer and turning on and off visibility of the duplicate, changing the blend mode. With that test Col, Val, Saturation and Tint all appear to give unexpected results. With identical layers Col,Val, Hue and Tint blends should show no difference.

@Cyril Dellenbach are you able to replicate this and, if so, report internally?

Dave

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