Controlling photodegradation lifetime of soft materials is of interest for different applications, such as the design of anisotropically degrading scaffolds for 3D cell culture. The coverage of different property-combinations achieved in the initial screening (Figure /C) was further expanded after the optimization step, thus gaining access to new subsets of materials with useful properties, such as low lifetime and high initial intensity (Figure ). Herein discovered materials with comparable size and therefor comparable swelling behavior can be used for the fabrication of multi-material structures that keep their structural features independent of their swelling degree. Thus, combinations of these materials with matching properties can easily be used for encryption of information into hidden patterns, only visible upon irradiation (Figure ), as data storage, as degradable scaffold or as hydrogel-based photoresists for lithography.