Spent 45 minutes trying to blend a layer before realizing I had it set to 'multiply' the whole time

I was messing with this character portrait for hours thinking my shading was broken, turns out the blend mode was jacked from the start, has anyone else lost time to a single dropdown menu?

3 comments

3 Comments

jackson.max1h ago

Honestly I gotta push back on this. Blame the tool all you want but blend modes are one of the most basic features in any art software. It literally says "multiply" right there in the dropdown. If you can't be bothered to check your layer settings before diving into hours of work that's kind of on you. The blender comparison doesn't work either because a blender has one job and one job only. A layer dropdown has a dozen options and they all do different things. You're supposed to know what you're picking. Digital art programs give you all this control and then people get mad when they accidentally use it wrong? Come on. It's like driving a car with the parking brake on and blaming the car for the slow acceleration.

wesley63912h ago

Is it just me or does this kind of thing happen WAY more often than it should? I've wasted whole afternoons on something similar with my kitchen blender once - thought the motor was dying because it kept making this grinding noise, but turns out the lid wasn't on all the way. It's like our brains skip the simplest fix first and go straight to the panic button. That dropdown menu should come with a warning label or something, haha.

the_sage9h ago

I get what you're saying but I actually disagree with the "brains skip the simplest fix" thing. I think that's not really what's happening here. When you're deep in some task and something breaks, your brain is already in "problem solving mode" focused on the thing you were trying to do. The dropdown menu is just a tool, not the goal. So you don't stop and think "wait maybe the tool is fine" because you're already frustrated your main task got interrupted. The blender thing is different too because a blender making grinding noises is actually a legit concern, a missing piece of data in a menu is just a visual glitch. I dunno, I think putting warning labels on dropdowns would be overkill when the real issue is just people need to take a breath before they freak out.