GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 532232
Layer "merge down" always reverts to layer mode "Normal"
Last modified: 2016-11-07 18:17:40 UTC
Please describe the problem: When merging two layers of a given layer type, e.g. two "soft light" layers, the layer mode is reset to "normal" rather than the more appropriate "soft light". Steps to reproduce: 1. 2. 3. Actual results: Expected results: Does this happen every time? I've explicitly verified it for layer modes "Soft light", "Hard light", "Grain merge", "Dissolve", and "Value". Can't test them all as I'm running out of time and want to file a separate report for some of those that behave slightly differently (but seemingly always resulting in a "normal" layer). Other information:
I am tempted to close this as NOTABUG as it definitely is the intended behavior. We might perhaps want to reconsider this decision. But this is definitely not a bug as the current defined behavior for a merge is that the resulting layer mode is "Normal".
What I find problematic about this is that it seems the layer mode of the lower layer is implicitly changed during the merge, to a normal layer. Because presumably you can't apply, say, soft light to soft light, as I think we discussed in the related bug. The user is not told that this change of layer mode is necessary to accomplish the merge, and may be surprised at the result. The only short-term fix I can see is to disallow merges where the bottom participating layer is not "normal", or at least to throw a warning, both of which are slightly ugly solutions, but they would seem to protect the innocent in this case.
Bug 712317 is a newer bug with a better description. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 712317 ***