Field guide
Combine pictures in sRGB or linear light?
sRGB numbers are shaped for display and storage, so halfway between two encoded values is not halfway in emitted light. Blend mode matters before the opacity slider does.
01
Normal alpha compositing is physically meaningful in linear light. Performing it directly on sRGB values often makes the overlap darker than the same mixture of light would be.
02
Artistic modes such as screen and overlay were historically defined in encoded values. Recreating a familiar editor look may therefore require sRGB arithmetic even when it is not physical.
03
Check soft gradients and bright saturated edges. Those areas reveal dark seams and colour shifts more readily than midtone photographs with busy texture.
04
Document the working space when matching another program. Two tools can use the same blend-mode name and still differ because one converts before blending and the other does not.
05
What this tool does: the board composites in encoded sRGB. The blender offers both: Encoded (sRGB), the default, matches an editor working in encoded values; Linear light converts every value with the sRGB transfer function before the blend and back afterwards, which always runs in the pixel loop because canvas compositing cannot apply those tables. A Compare switch shows the other space without changing the file, and the export readout names the space the file was mixed in.