Non destructive workflows

twtw · April 24, 2026, 2:52pm

Hi!
No matter where I go, I always come back to Aseprite. Nothing beats it!
But having spent the few last years working in photoshop. substance painter, after effects etc, when I came back to Aseprite I suddenly felt very strongly the lack of non destructive workflows. I mean by that of course: masks! But not only: procedural and adjustable effects, adjustement layers, and whatever more we can think of. It would simply add a whole bunch of new possibilities.

Thanks!

CrashTestJava · April 24, 2026, 7:42pm

These are already planned features.

github.com/aseprite/aseprite

Mask Layers + Transparent Pixel Lock

opened 11:16AM - 24 Aug 14 UTC

VetNovice

feature high priority

It'd be great to implement masks to make coloring, shading, and effects of any d…rawing easier. Having a hierarchy of masks within masks would be super helpful too. So I can do, for example: - Make a Color layer. Duplicate it, create a mask out of it called 'Color Mask'. - Put the Color within the mask. - Create a Shadow layer within the Color Mask layer to apply shadows liberally. > Color Mask > ...... > Shadow > ...... > Color - Make a Shadow Mask within that so then I can tweak bounce lights or effects with soft brushing. > Color Mask > ...... > Shadow Mask > ............ > Shadow > ............ > Bounce Light > ............ > Core shadow > ...... > Color Allowing me a deep hierarchy of masks will make coloring and shading much easier for myself and others, in addition to other practical applications. Transparent Pixel Lock is a tool that takes the alpha values of a layer and locks them, but it will allow me to change the color of the pixels as I so please. It will just give me another took at my disposal that will make my life so much easier to paint and animate with pixels. If you ever need help visualizing what masks are or the applications it can have in animation in addition to what Transparent Pixel Locks are, feel free to inquire and I can provide detailed explanations with illustrations!

twtw · April 24, 2026, 8:09pm

Nice. But i see the layer masks post is from 2014… is it still planned?

CrashTestJava · April 25, 2026, 2:39am

Yep, I believe it’s being worked on in smaller steps, because to implement it the rendering engine needs to be re-written, which is no small task. Maybe at some point the development on it will pick up.

github.com/aseprite/aseprite

Shader-based render engine

opened 02:23PM - 13 Sep 22 UTC

dacap

feature maintenance performance render refactor complexity gpu

A planned effort we have (as an item of #960) is to rewrite the rendering engine… to use shaders (SkSL language, skia shaders). This should fix several issues at the same time and can be a progressive effort: - [x] use SkShaders to use CPU or GPU accelerated rendering (similar as we've done with color selectors in #2900) - [ ] cache rendered tiles (portion of the canvas in an editor/frame) (check some insights from the Chrome team https://web.dev/speed-layers/ ) - [ ] rendering layer groups separately #3225 - [ ] mask layers https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/issues/459#issuecomment-260010136 - [ ] allow dynamic effects: https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/issues/3169#issuecomment-1034212537, https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/issues/1506, https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/issues/3377 - [ ] Fix some bugs with current renderer like #2661 and #3533 - [ ] #3616 I have a minimal work-in-progress commit to start the refactor, but nothing serious yet. Some initial work was done with a66c170ded41e01667c2180dcd1bc99258bf02ce and d012bd2d45382705ae0de6e4d6602b7126701b03 and I'll start a PR to make some progress and indicate the steps to follow.

The roadmap says it is planned for 1.4: