I am going through the Inkscape book by Bethany Hiitola 2012 and it says to do the following to blend two different colored circles. However, no matter how I do it, it never results in a blended intersection color.

Let's add in a Multiply blend filter to two simple objects as an example:

Open a new document in Inkscape.
Use the Circle/Ellipse tool and create one red circle and one yellow circle, shown as follows:
Now move the yellow circle so it overlaps the red circle:
Open the Layers dialog and go to the Blend mode drop-down menu. Select Multiply as follows
The two objects combine as if light were shining through both. The red and yellow objects—where they overlap—display orange, shown as follows:
If you now change the Blend mode back to Normal, the two objects now go back to being normal, or just simply overlapping.
What just happened?
We learned how to adjust the Blend mode between layers. We took two example objects (circles in this case) and gave them the Multiply blend. Then we learned how to turn the blend back to Normal mode.

Hi.

Layer blend modes affect layers rendering between eachother.
If both objects are on the same layer set to multiply blending, you won't see one object above the other affected.
But it will be seen as expected if you put objects below the objects on the filtered layer.

I've tried many different ways, putting the two circles on different layers, on the same layer, moving them to different levels(Up, Down). Nothing seems to work. Not sure what I am missing.

Sorry to say but I think that´s not going to work; red multiplied by yellow won´t give orange as a result in no raster/vector app I know of. A blend-mode like average will do for example but it´s not available in Inkscape as far as I know.
I don´t see a possibility to get orange where yellow+red overlap via blend-modes in Inkscape.


Cheers
P.

Those instructions are correct, as to how to use blend modes. But they don't work for me either. I think it's because yellow and red are poor choices for illustrating the Multiply blend mode. If you use more of a pink and yellow, you can begin to see the effect. Or blue and yellow really shows it.

Each of the blend modes blend whatever is in the layer, in a different way. As far as I understand, there are mathematical formulas behind them. If you try the red and yellow circles with other blend modes, you'll see what happens.

However, I think those instructions are giving the wrong impression about blending colors. As I said, they are correct as to how to use the "blend modes". (Inkscape has loads more blend modes, in the current version, btw !) But there are other ways to blend colors, depending on your goals. For example, transparency, or maybe even gradients.

Also, Inkscape has changed a lot since that manual was written. It's possible that worked in the version the author was using (whatever version that was).

Is there something you're specifically trying to do right now? Or you're just reading and learning? If you have a particular situation on your canvas where you need to blend colors, you're welcome to show us your SVG file and explain exactly what you want. Then we can give you some suggestions for achieving it.

(Polygon, that's not Inkscape in your screenshot, is it?)

Thanks Brynn and Polygon,
Yes, the book was written on version 0.42. I am only trying to learn the program. It seems that a lot of tutorials and instructional sources do not work, as they are written long ago. Do you know of any up to date learning sources? Before asking on this forum, I searched the official user guides, but even they often say, "Not updated for version 0.92."

The manual is still the most current official source, and it's still good for most things.

But there are many other options. I can recommend:
- the tutorials that come with Inkscape (Help -> Tutorials)
- Xav's series in the full circle magazine: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11981
- an official beginners' manual 'in development' (feedback welcome): http://write.flossmanuals.net/start-wit ... roduction/
- and many more, see youtube and a curated list here: http://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/

With custom filtering you can create a blend mode as "average".
Well almost. Upon checking there is no "lightness value" blend mode.

The attached filter blends a 50% transparent copy of the filtered object in saturation blend mode and in color mode after. Not 100% perfect but it can give an idea.