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Importing as layers works pretty well. It cuts out all but the first and last canvas resize as well as all the pasting, so that's a big improvement. The weirdest thing I ran into in my test was that I lost my "Date Taken" file attribute when I saved out. Could that be because I flattened many layers each with a different "Date Taken"? I may need to delete all other layers instead of flattening, or copy the target layer to a new image before saving. Thanks for the advice, though. I think this will save me time. kd

I've got a lot of photos that all need to be scaled and positioned relative to a key photo. For each photo I go through the same process in Paint.NET: paste key as layer, resize canvas, change opacity of key layer, scale, position, delete key layer, resize canvas, save, close. Only the scale (which may require a couple undos) and position steps need my input. The rest of time I'm just hitting keystrokes and waiting for commands to complete. So I'd like to remove as much of the repetitive stuff as possible and I'd like some advice. I initially figured I'd just write an add-in in c# to script the whole thing, but after a bit of digging, I'm not sure an add-in could pull this off. I've briefly looked at Windows scripting tools like AutoHotKey and thought maybe even PowerShell could help. I see a lot of different approaches, but none look particularly promising. And advice appreciated. kd

That actually works fairly well except that I have to decrease the canvas back down at the end, so it adds a couple more steps and I've got hundreds of these to do. I guess that's a reasonable price to pay. Thanks! kd

I have a very specific problem I'm trying to solve with Paint.NET. I have been doing this with Pixelmator, but I'm trying to move from Mac to Windows. OK, I have a bunch of portraits and I want to standardize all of them so that the face is the same size and in the same position as a key portrait. The way I've always gone about this in Pixelmator is to load my key portrait and copy it to the clipboard. Then for each portrait I need to standardize, I load it into Pixelmator. Then I paste the key portrait in as a new layer and make it 50% transparent. Then I position the portrait to edit so that the eyes are just below the key's eyes, then use scale to make the eyes exactly the same size, and then I drag the portrait to edit so that the eyes exactly overlay the key's eyes. Then I remove the key layer and save. Done. The same basic series of steps are doable in Paint.NET, but one problem arises. I can copy the key to the clipboard and paste it into the portrait to edit, and make it transparent. I can move the portrait to edit so the eyes are just beneath the key's eyes, and then I can scale it to have the same size eyes. But this is where the problem comes in. When I scale it, anything that gets sized off the edges is clipped and lost. So when I do the next step of repositioning the portrait, I'm left with portions of image that are missing. Is there a way to make Paint.NET not lose the parts of the image that moved beyond the edges? Of if anyone has a better process for this project, I'm all ears. Thanks, Kevin

Perfect. I promise I will now Read The Manual. I've been trying to move my photo editing off my Mac (using Pixelmator - great little editor) onto Windows. I've looked through so many editors I can't even believe it. I looked at Paint.Net early on but it looked underpowered (I was wrong). I went on to look at PhotoPlus, Photo-Brush, Pixel, PhotoLine, Pixopedia, LView Pro, Ultimate Paint, Fotografix, PhotoFiltre, Photo Pos Pro, and NeoPaint. I also, of course, looked PaintShop and Photoshop, both of which want you to sign up for an account before you can even do an eval - no thank you. And I looked at Gimp, but multi-platform is always clunky. I remembered how nice and simple Paint.Net looked, so I decided to give it another look. I'm impressed. It was one of the first I looked at and I wasn't being as thorough at that time because I didn't expect my search to take weeks. But it seems to do it all, simply and powerfully. I'll definitely be sending my donation along shortly. Thanks for a great app!

Short version: how do you scale a layer while retaining aspect ratio? Longer version: I see I can select within a layer and then drag one of the corner handles and resize that layer. But unless I manage to drag perfectly, the aspect ratio of my selection gets distorted as well. Is there a way to lock the aspect ratio while I'm scaling? Or is there a way to scale a layer using a dialog where I just give it the scaling percentage? Thanks!