Layer Blend Modes

[Bob]

I just found out about this tool and I love it! This is so much nicer than having to work with Photoshop’s batch and database functions. Thanks so much for making this! The macros, the html integration, the database connectivity, the sets management, the quick previewing; awesome work! My only issue with it is that it is so hard to find tutorials for software named Cocktail, as the internet seems to be crammed with drink recipes/tutorials for the other kind of cocktail.

One question though, I found out about image masks but I have not seen a way to blend layers similar to Photoshop (multiply, screen, overlay, etc.). For me, this is really the last thing needed to do a professionally designed project in Cocktail. I want to keep illustrations and graphic design elements separate, but sometimes I want the illustration to blend with a graphical element a little. Is there a way to blend layers or is this in development?

[Dan Goodman]

Sorry for the late reply. Glad you are liking the tool. Unfortunately, modes like subtract, multiply, etc… are not possible in the current version. You can only blend by opacity through the brush properties, like opacity mask and fill (depending on layer type). We are planning to add pixel-shader-based effects, which could give you the desired functionality in the future, though.

[Bob]

Thanks, Dan! I was thinking of using it with my game design class so I am happy to hear that it is still under development. I think I figured most of its functionality out by now and am looking forward to future updates!

Some quick feedback in case it is helpful:
1. I have been playing around with it trying to recreate some Magic The Gathering style cards but my test database in Excel (4 cards) has Cocktail crash whenever I refresh the database while Excel is open.
2. This is probably unsupported but I was trying to have flavor and oracle text come from the same cell in Excel and I was not able to find a way that would allow for me to change the font color and font size in the same way that you can use HTML elsewhere.
3. I haven’t found a way to enable vertical alignment on text. It would be convenient to have text align to the bottom or middle of a text box some time.
4. I would love for a parent/child layout feature that allows to make a duplicate of a layout with a bunch of locked layers that are editable in the original. It would make creating layout variants and editing them later on a lot faster.
5. Mostly aesthetic, but it would be neat to be able to have a “show without bleed” preview to see what a card looks like when the bleed is cut off.
6. A character spacing feature would be helpful. Currently I have macros set up for the cost of a card which looks great in the Oracle text, but in the cost of a card the icons are a bit close together to look good. Spaces are too big to look good either, so it would be helpful to be able to set character spacing.
7. This is silly, but the name “Cocktail” makes it really difficult to find any kind of support online as I just end up seeing tutorials for drinks.

Anyways, thanks so much for doing this. It is a wonderful piece of software as-is and I might do a video tutorial for it at some point.

[Author]

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