Serif has a host of Affinity products engineered to meet every single one of your design needs. Affinity Designer is a vector graphics editor compatible with macOS, iPad, and Microsoft Windows. With so many design applications on the market and industry staples like Photoshop and Illustrator, it could be challenging to learn a new application with different functions.

Often in applications, there are multiple ways to execute a single function. Blending colors can take on a few different modes and depends on the desired effect when blending two or more colors. Keep reading to find out how to blend colors in Affinity Designer.

How to Blend Colors Using Blend Modes in Affinity Designer

There are a few ways you can blend colors in Affinity Designer. One of the primary ways is to use blend modes with your paint brush tool or vector brush tool. The blend mode you choose will depend on the effect you desire. The paintbrush tool can be found in pixel persona and works alongside all the vector tools.

Here’s how to use it:

1. At the top left-hand corner, select the icon for Pixel Persona
2. Navigate to the Tools panel to the left of the Affinity Designer canvas and select the Paint Brush Tool.
3. Navigate to your Brushes Studio in the panel on the right-hand side of the Affinity Designer canvas and select the brush type from the list.
4. Once you’ve selected the brush from Brushes Studio, select a color from the Color studio.
5. At the top of the Affinity Designer canvas are the settings for the brush: width, opacity, flow, hardness, and so on. Click on the drop-down menu for Blend Mode and select your desired mode.

The vector brush tool is used similarly but is found in Designer Persona. You can continue to follow the same steps to locate and use the brush. Note that the settings are slightly different in the top toolbar but still contain Blend Modes.

A blend mode changes how the applied pixel or color interacts with the existing pixel or color. Let’s look at a few of the 33 blend modes you can select from on Affinity Designer and how they function. Once you’re done with your project in the application, you can take it over to placeit.net to mock up merchandise or marketing materials.

Multiply/Screen/Overlay

The screen mode is the opposite of multiply, where the result of the blend is a combination of the top and bottom color, always resulting in a lighter color value.

The multiply mode has the opposite effect of screen mode in that the combination of the top and bottom color always results in a darker color value.

Overlay mode is a combination of screen and multiply. Depending on the bottom color, it can multiply or screen the colors. The bottom color preserves highlights and shadows, while the top color reflects the darkness or lightness of the base color.

Color Dodge/Color Burn

Color dodge lights the bottom color relative to the value of the top color. If the top color is black, there is no change to the bottom color.

Color burn darkens the bottom color relative to the value of the top color. If the top color is white, there is no change to the bottom color.

Saturation/Hue/Luminosity/Color

All of these modes are a variation of one another. Saturation combines the bottom color’s luminance and hue with the top color’s saturation. Areas with no saturation will be left unchanged. Hue combines the bottom color’s luminance and saturation with the top color’s hue.

Luminosity combines the hue and saturation of the bottom color with the luminance of the top color— creating an inverse effect. Color mode combines the bottom color’s luminance with the top color’s saturation and hue.

Darken/Lighten

Darken selects the resulting color based on whichever is darker—the top or bottom color. Anything lighter than the top color is replaced, but areas darker than the top color are left unchanged.

Lighten selects the resulting color based on whichever is lighter— the top or bottom color. Anything darker than the top color is replaced, but areas lighter than the top color are left unchanged.

Hard Light/Soft Light

Hard light functions depending on the top color; it multiplies or screens the color values— like shining a harsh light on the image.

Soft light functions depending on the top color; it may darken or lighten the color values— like shining a diffused light on the image.

Difference/Exclusion

Difference mode depends on which has the greater value in brightness, the top or bottom color, and subtracts one from the other. White inverts the values of the bottom color, while black produces no change.

The only distinction between Exclusion and Difference is lower contrast. White creates an inversion of bottom color values, while black produces no change.

How to Blend Colors With Retouch Tools in Affinity Designer

If using blend modes with your paint brush tool or vector brush tool isn’t what you’re looking for when trying to blend two colors on your canvas, there are other tools you can use to blend. One tool you might be familiar with if you have used other design applications like Photoshop is the smudge tool.

The smudge tool allows you to blend brush strokes and images seamlessly. Here’s how to use it:

1. At the top left-hand corner, select the icon for Pixel Persona
2. In the tools panel on the left-hand side of the Affinity Designer canvas and select the smudge tool
3. Be sure the layer with the colors you want to blend is selected
4. Adjust width, flow, and strength to the desired setting
5. Focus the tool on the area you want to blend, and use your mouse or stylus to start smudging until you get your desired blend.

An honorable mention would be the Blur Brush Tool, also found under the Retouch tools. Each tool requires practice and proper technique to execute the desired effect.

Conclusion

Now you have a few tools under your belt for blending colors in Affinity Designer. All that’s left is to play around with the blend modes and tools to see which achieves the desired effect for your perfect blend.