How to add visual effects and manage layer rendering

To customize the design of your maps, you can use layer effects and rendering.

Layer effects #

To define layer effects:

1. Open the Layer control
2. Click on the down arrow to see the details
3. Click on “More settings“
4. Click on “Advanced“
5. Click on “Effects:

Here are the effects available:

Drop shadow #

Enabling the drop shadow applies a drop shadow around all the features in the layer:

Here are the options:

• Color: color and transparency of the drop shadow
• Size: drop shadow width in pixels
• Strength: sets how quickly the colour fades out to the blur width
• Distance: sets the number of pixels the drop shadow should be displaced relative to the source feature
• Angle: sets the angle the shadow should be moved relative to the source feature

Outer glow #

Enabling the outer glow applies a glow effect around all the features in the layer:

Here are the options:

• Color: color and transparency of the outer glow
• Size: outer glow width in pixels
• Strength: sets how quickly the colour fades out to the blur width

Inner glow #

Enabling the inner glow applies a glow effect around the inside of a feature’s border. For polylines, the effect is more noticeable with thicker stroke width

Here are the options:

• Color: color and transparency of the inner glow
• Size: inner glow width in pixels
• Strength: sets how quickly the colour fades out to the blur width

Layer rendering #

The layer rendering applies a blend mode to enhance the rendering of a vector layer on top of another layer, to see through the layer.

To define layer effects:

1. Open the Layer control
2. Click on the down arrow to see the details
3. Click on “More settings“
4. Click on “Advanced“
5. Click on “Rendering
6. Use the drop-down list to select a rendering mode:

Here is the list of available rendering mode:

• Normal: The layer’s features appear on top of the background.
• Multiply: Multiplies the values of the layer’s colour by the background color, and then normalizes by dividing by 0xFF, resulting in darker colours.
• Screen: Multiplies the complement (inverse) of the layer’s colour by the complement of the background colour, resulting in a bleaching effect.
• Lighten: Select the lighter of the constituent colours of the layer and the colour of the background (the colours with the larger values).
• Overlay: Adjusts the colour of each pixel based on the darkness of the background. If the background is lighter than 50% gray, the layer and background colours are screened, which results in a lighter colour. If the background is darker than 50% gray, the colours are multiplied, which results in a darker colour.
• Hardlight: Adjusts the colour of each pixel based on the darkness of the layer. If the layer is lighter than 50% gray, the layer and background colours are screened, which results in a lighter colour. If the layer is darker than 50% gray, the colours are multiplied, which results in a darker colour.

If you are using a light colour base map, we recommend using the Multiply blend mode. This will provide transparency without altering the opacity of a layer.

When using a dark colour base map, we recommend the Overlay blend mode.