[SDL] Why use OpenGL for rendering 2D game? [was] Scripting (3)

[Mason Wheeler]

>________________________________
>From: Gabriel Gambetta <mystml at adinet.com.uy>
>Subject: Re: [SDL] Why use OpenGL for rendering 2D game? [was] Scripting (3)
>
>2) Effects. A hardware-accelerated backend lets us do scaling,
>rotation, alpha blending, additive blending and color tinting "for
>free", while doing that on software would be extremely cpu and/or
>memory consuming, to the point of being impractical.

Ooo... is there a GL API for color tinting? Last time I checked, you had to blit your
sprite to the screen, then blit a solid rectangle of color on top of it using partial
transparency and making sure it gets restricted to the original sprite's mask.
Is there a simpler way?