EFFECTS1: Drop Shadow becomes a saved layer effect
Layer effects are now part of the document. Drop Shadow settings survive save and reopen, and shadows are built once per repaint instead of once per tile.
Illustrative photograph. It does not show Forge software.
EFFECTS1 makes layer effects real document state instead of temporary decoration.
Saved with your work
Every layer now carries its effect settings, and .pforge files save and restore them. Damaged effect fields are repaired individually on open, with a warning, instead of discarding the whole layer. The document format version did not need to change.
Drawn once, not 130 times
The canvas renders the document in 256-pixel tiles. Before EFFECTS1, a large document rebuilt the same drop shadow for every tile, which at 3300 by 2550 pixels meant about 130 shadow builds per repaint. Shadows are now built once per paint pass and shared across tiles, within a fixed memory budget.
Honest limits
- Drop Shadow is drawn for pixel, background, and text layers. Vector layers keep their effect settings but do not draw them yet.
- Stroke and glow settings are stored but not yet rendered.
- At very large blur radii the shadow shows visible stepping. A quality and speed pass is on the roadmap.
