Is this a bug or a feature?

I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature, since it sometimes can be used to nice effect.

When smearing with shift, I sometimes noticed fringing when smearing over transparent areas. What I have discovered is that it uses your current color when doing the blend, even if that color is not on the canvas.

Example:
Starting from all default settings with a fresh canvas,... enlarge the brush size a bit so things can be seen, and paint a red splotch. Now hold shift and smear it. Things work as expected here.

Now change the color to something else, a bright yellow for example. Without painting this color, smudge again and this yellow color will appear in the smudge area. This works for whatever color is current.

It's actually quite useful, but I'm trying to figure it out if it is intended or not, and if it is intended, is there a control that affects how much the new color is introduced? This is definitely not the same as the smudge chroma setting.

[Taron]

Yes. that's part of the wacky nature of Verve as it is now. It may even continue to work that way, but I'm still trying to think of alternatives. It works this way, because everything goes immediately onto the canvas as opposed to the common use of an invisible buffer, filled with the current color where your brush basically just paints on an alpha for the blending of it onto the actual color buffer. In Verve it goes straight onto it, which sounds insane, because it kind of is, but it enables not only the speed of the fluids, but also something else that you will soon see and that may explain for why you won't have ever seen anything like it, I believe. At least I'm not sure, if any other painter ever had it that way?! I'll keep it mysterious.

HOWEVER, as soon as there is paint on the canvas, this kind of "bug" won't happen. It sounds like a silly thing, right?! Why would that be no problem, but an empty canvas gives us phantom colors? It's all a little more complicated than one might think, but I continue to ponder over better approaches.

Oh, to explain what exactly is happening:
When ever you choose a new color, all the empty space on the canvas will get filled with the color at an alpha of 0 (with a slight overlap). If there has been some material from painting with a different color earlier, smearing will bring those "phantom" RGB values onto the existing material build-up, revealing the new color. It's actually a very neat tool, if you know what you can accomplish with that, but most of the time it's simply irritating. I'll work it out eventually, hopefully.

Ah, that makes perfect sense.

I actually don't mind it at all, and like I mentioned before it can actually be used in some cases for a nice effect. (looks really nice to go around a cloud with a highlight rim color for the smear, for example) I was mostly asking for those few times when it was undesirable, just in case it was something I had control over with one of the many knobs.

Thanks again!