Blens Modes in menu form

The Blend component has 19 different Blend Modes, compared to the 27 that Photoshop uses. Besides the Dissolve blend (that to my knowledge nobody uses), the following modes are missing in FF :

Darker Color
Lighter Color
Pin Light
Hard Light
Exclusion
Subtract
Divide

Subtract and Divide I find in the RGB components. Why are they not available in the Blend component?

How can I simulate Pin Light and Exclusion? Over the others that are absent I won't loose any sleep.

When in the Editor, I can choose a blend mode in the Blend component via a nice popUp menu. How can I do the same when the filter is normally used (so like the regular user would use the filter). So in the Settings. So far I have only been able to make the Modes in a blend component accessible through a Slider. But when I select 15 on the Slider, not many people will know that this would represent the 'Difference' mode. It would be nice to be able to select the modes by name.

Regards, Beat

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Emme : You can google the Photoshop blending mode formulas and you'll find the math. Use either the RGB math components or a script to simulate the wanted blending modes.

Thanks Emme, I was already a bit afraid of that. No problem, but it would have been nice if we would have all the going Blend Modes in the Blend component.

More serious I find that FF has no possibilities for assembling PopUp menus. I feel that's a weak point for an otherwise great program.
Is it also impossible via scripting? Or does scripting also give access to user interface elements?

Thank, emme, I will definitely put a couple of things on the Feature Request list.

Here you go.

Darker Color and Lighter Color is not included. I think these modes run in HSL space.

Also, the "Fill" parameter in Photoshop seems to affect each blend mode in a special way (try it out on Hard Mix). I added "Fill" parameter to my Hard Mix mode, but I guess many of the other modes has special Fill handling.

I addded several other modes that are not included in PS. Including a set of blend modes I created many years ago (quadratic modes) which has been included in several image/video processing apps. Its the four mode variants of the one called "Reflect" (see here: http://www.pegtop.net/delphi/articles...ratic.htm). To understand the four mode variants of each blendmode, simply think of it as inverting input/output or flipping the blendmap.

The start up blend mode is a new one I made some years ago which was never published. Its called "Absorb" and I think the properties and outcome is rather interesting as it preserves both light and dark areas of each input image.

Blend Modes.ffxml

I am sorry for the late reply - I had to go away for some days.

Sphinxmorpher, I played with your Blend Modes filter, and it certainly widens the possible Blend Modes. Great.
As I am new to FF, I have not looked at scripting. And from what I see in your filter, the way to achieve the new blend modes is done by scripting. I definitely want to learn that part as well, but one step at the time.
Is there a way to just look at the scripts, or is that the 'secret of the cook'?

The link, http://www.pegtop.net/delphi/articles...ratic.htm , you posted is highly interesting and I am still studying the details.

Some of the Blend Modes you have incorporated in your filter, are not described on the website of above mentioned link. But I will try to find some info about the on the net.


OPACITY vs FILL :

I understand that reducing opacity, reduces everything on that layer.
Fill reduces only the pixels and not e.g. the layer styles.

But if I use two pixel only layers A and B, and I reduce the Fill on B in difference mode, it looks totally different (and better for me) than setting the Opacity of B to the same amount as the Fill (fill again at 100%). So on some BM, the fill also works different on pixel only layers.

Opacity is also described on the above website and gives:result := a + (f(a,b)-a) * o;
Does anyone know the formula or workings of Fill?
And is there a way in FF to use Fill?

Here are some descriptions of the blend modes:


Euclidean Overlay
Like Overlay, but with more contrast

Back Light
Like Average, but with a little more contrast.

Absorb
A blendmode that preserves dark and light areas of both foreground and background.

Similarity
The more similar background and foreground the greater the output. Its the opposite of Difference mode. Also called "Negation" and "Phoenix".

Helix
Funky version of Similarity mode


About Fill
In many blendmodes fill simply scales the foreground value, but in some it acts as a third parameter to the blend mode formula (besides foreground and background). We should do a study of the blend modes in Photoshop and figure out Fills effect on each formula.

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Sphinxmorpher wrote: I've made components for this stuff, with a new blending component that also fixes the faultly blending in FF. Basically the blending component takes external blendmap inputs. I think I included all the ones you list + some other useful blendmodes from other apps and some of my own inventions.

Thanks really very much for taking the time to make this and for making all these blend modes in components separately and that can be used each one in a separate way and make a influence slider

Now would be really lovely handy and useful to have a drop down menu or pop up to be able to select one of the blend modes, but this has been requested many times during these years to the FF team and has not been done yet

For rewinding to the original question of this thread : Blend Modes in menu form for the user.
Would it be possible to that by scripting? It would not seem too hard to translate a bunch of text lines to numbers, which could control a switch component. The thing is of course, does FF allow this. Or are the Curve- and Map Script objects the only two doors to the heart of FF? Are there any ways to 'break in'? Or should a scriptable user interface component be put on the feature request list? My experience so far is great with FF, but the user interface part is a bit underdeveloped, unfortunately, I find.

Thanks for the disappointing info. It would seem a very useful and elementary function and as far as I can see, not to hard to implement it for the FF team. I find the user interface (not the editor) the weak link in the program.

By lack of dropDown menu for the Blend Modes, is there a way to let the user use (by integerSlider f.i.), only let's say 4 non-consecutive Blend Modes (e.g. Normal, Soft Light, Difference and Luminosity)? So disabling the other modes. Of course it could be done by using 4 different Blend components with fixed blend mode and feed them into a switch with 4 possibilities, but this seems a - although slight - computational waste and lots of unnecessary clutter in the editor.
Any better ideas?