Blending modes

You can affect the look of an object by changing the way that it blends with colors beneath it. When you change an object's blending mode, the fill and stroke colors change, depending on what colors are beneath the object.

To change an object's blending mode, first expand the Appearance category in the Properties panel by clicking the expand button . Then choose from the Blend Mode drop-down list. By default, all objects are set to the Normal blending mode.

The Appearance section of the Properties panel displaying the extended options.

Here is a short description of each blending mode.

• Normal  The foreground color is fully opaque, except for objects for which the opacity is set to less than 100%.

• Multiply  The Multiply blending mode always results in a darker color (except when the foreground or background color is white, in which case there is no change). Multiply is like overprinting two inks. For example, setting a yellow box to Multiply and putting the box over a blue area results in green.

• Screen  The Screen blending mode (which some other applications call "light") is like projecting two or more colored lights at a white wall: the result is almost always lighter than the original colors. If you place a red path, a green path, and a blue path on top of each other and set them to the Screen blending mode, the result will be white.

• Color Dodge  In the Color Dodge mode, the color channels of the background color are brightened based on the color channels in the foreground color. If the foreground color is black, then it has no effect. Anything brighter than black dodges ("lightens") the background. The result is often lighter than the Screen blending mode.

• Color Burn  Here, the background colors are darkened based on the foreground colors. A black foreground color will result in black, while a white foreground color will have no effect.

• Lighten  The Lighten blending mode (which some applications call "brighten") compares the color channels of the foreground and background colors and uses the lighter of the two.

• Darken  This mode compares the color channels of the foreground and background colors and uses the darker of the two.

• Difference  In the Difference blending mode, Expression Design mathematically subtracts each color channel of the foreground object from the color channel of the background color. If two colors are exactly the same, the result will be black. If the two colors are on exactly opposite sides of the color spectrum (such as red and cyan), the result will be white. This blending mode produces interesting but sometimes unexpected results, especially with soft-edge paths in bright colors.

• Eraser  The foreground object acts as an eraser through all objects below it on the same layer. Any object on a different layer beneath shows through.