Linear Burn on layer, Difference on gradient overlay
Hi there everyone,
I'm working with photoshop on a little abstract nonsense, and I have a layer which contains a few blocks. The blocks are blue-ish in color, and I added a gradient overlay with a rainbow gradient. The blending mode for the overlay is difference, the blending mode for the layer is linear burn.
Now my expectation is that the blocks on the black background will turn dark, because of the linear burn; however they turn bright in color. When I merge the layer before applying the linear burn mode and apply linear burn on the merged layer, it does work as I expected.
I'm confused, why does the Linear Burn mode on the layer act differently when the gradient overlay effect is on the layer? Is there an order in which blending modes are applied within the layer? This might be a stupid question, but I don't see where the Linear Burn blending mode does not result in a darker color. See images attached
Thanks,
Bas
When not merged, Linear Burn applied to a layer with a Gradient Overlay with the Difference blending mode

When the same layer is merged (after Linear Burn was changed to Normal), and Linear Burn is applied to the merged layer

