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This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it This is an exercise in how using a few simple shapes and applying a few plugins can achieve very believable results It's very image heavy but not overtly complex. Some Filled Rectangle sizes give better results than others/ as does the amount of wobble The screw and bolt without textures can have textures laid over them and use Multiply/ Overlay - play with opacity. The usual drill plugIns: Wobble Texture Object Rounder Texture Shader BoltBait's Custom Shapes Untextured Screw Textured Screw Untextured Bolt Textured Bolt ------------------------------------------------------------------ And you've nailed it. Well, screwed it ... bolted it Examples It resizes well Thanks to @Ed Harvey @MJW and @BoltBait and everyone who has posted a plugin. Their work makes things easier/ possible for use mere mortals @Ego Eram Reputo ... some of the images are bigger - slap my wrist if you want me to change them

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it PlugIns Used Outline Object Conditional Hue/ Saturation Optional: Transparency also in BoltBait's pack Shines Because of the fiddly nature of lots of copying and pasting I thought a video of this would explain it better. I will put up a written version ***Apologies in advance for the small swear word that slips out when I make a mistake*** ... Any parts someone doesn't understand please shout out, as my mouth was either dry as a bone or I was dribbling ... Play around with Blend Modes/ Opacity and Duplicating Layers - it can change drastically Written Instructions

I made these light bulbs in blender, then made the animation in PDN. I'm very happy with the bulb details in the outcome.

I dunno ... looking at a couple I have to wonder how crappy my last monitor was ... awful colouring on the 'workshop tools' one 😯 (May have a good at that one again) Thanks EER. No problen ... No rush I've got really fed up of working on reptile skin ... so decided to try and tick something off my bucket list. Skin. Human. (Not in a Silence of The Lambs/ Buffalo Bill way ...) I've always been awe of @Pixey @Aislin and @lynxster4 and their digital painting of portraits etc and want to try to perfect it myself. Not as easy as they make it look ... All credit for this one goes to the original artist Mary Jane (some very very talented people out there.) Basically, it's colouring in, but still quite a few layers and blurs in there ... especially happy with getting some low-lights in her hair Colour Wash .. a tip ... If your partner is talking to you about something important ... don't suddenly change the subject and ask them to put their hair up like the model, so you can capture how the light looks. It really doesn't go down too well 🤐 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Something I played with

Many thanks for the encouragement and taking the time Lynxster. People are so nice to me here. I'd visit more often were my internet connection more this century. Mind you I'm not complaining. It's something else to be able to sit in the scrub with a computer. What a time to be alive. Here is a picture of a flying duck because I wanted an excuse to make twisted waves. As can be seen I've made extensive use of Twist plugin and the on board oil painting plugin.

Two dingoes and a wallaby deciding what to have for dinner. I've already butchered the wallaby so I imagine he'll get ett. Fur blur is all the go up my neck of the woods. I'm still working out how to drive it but its a way handy plugin.

Equirectangular Diffuse Transform DLL: Equirectangular Diffuse Transform.zip The user interface: Summary: The Texture Shader has a mapping mode called Reflection Map (Equirectangular) which allows a panoramic image stored as an equirectangular (ER) map to be reflected onto a height map. Equirectangular Diffuse Transform provides a method by which the panoramic image can also be used to apply diffuse lighting consistent with the same image. The basic method is to use the original panoramic image to produce the reflection, then use the same image transformed with Equirectangular Diffuse Transform to produce the diffuse lighting, using the Texture Shader's Gradient Map (Equirectangular) mapping mode. The offset and rotation of the Texture Shader's clipboard image should remain the same for the two steps, and normally the light source should be Ambient, without Directional light. The Help menu description: ==================== Equirectangular Diffuse Transform transforms an equirectangular environment map into an equirectangular diffuse map that can be used to apply diffuse lighting to a height map. The effect uses the first five bands of spherical harmonics to approximate convolution with a clamped cosine function covering a hemisphere. The resulting diffuse map map can be used by the Texture Shader effect, with the Clipboard Image Mapping Method set to Gradient Map (Equirectangular). Typically, the Directional Light Intensity should be set to zero, and the Ambient Light Color adjusted to determine the light intensity. The width of an equirectangular map is normally twice the height, but any image will be treated as though it covers the entire sphere. The controls are: Pre-Scale Brightness to Maximum Range: When enabled, the brightness of the diffuse map is automatically adjusted so that the the maximum color is as bright as possible without overflowing. This provides the largest brightness range when shading. When disabled, if Expansion Gamma equals Compression Gamma Reciprocal, the color of a constant-color map is unchanged when transformed; if Expansion Gamma does not equal Compression Gamma Reciprocal, a constant-white map is unchanged when transformed. Brightness: Adjusts the brightness of the diffuse map. Brightness values greater than 1.0 should generally not be used when Pre-Scale Brightness to Maximum Range is enabled, since they will result in color overflow, and therefore clamping. Expansion Gamma: The exponent to which the color components are raised before being transformed. When equal to Compression Gamma Reciprocal, this can be used to compensate for gamma compression. Gamma is typically around 2.2. When used with Compression Gamma Reciprocal set to 1.0, it provides a contrast adjustment for the pre-transformed map; increasing the upper-end contrast when greater than 1.0, and decreasing the upper-end contrast when less than 1.0. This can be useful for emphasizing the lights in the map over the background colors. Compression Gamma Reciprocal: The reciprocal of the exponent to which the color components of the diffuse map are raised. Link Expansion and Compression Gammas: When enabled, Expansion Gamma will always match Compression Gamma Reciprocal. ==================== Example: Original equirectangular map: Transformed map (with gamma of 1.0): Shading example: Shading details: Additional comments: Though I think theoretically using a gamma of 2.2 makes sense, the example above uses a gamma of 1.0. Until recently, I began to doubt the gamma control was very useful, except as a contrast adjustment; but now I'm beginning to think using a gamma of 2.2 might be better. The plugin was originally inspired a a series of articles called Spherical Harmonics and applications in real time graphics. If you compare my transformed image to the article's, you'll see they are different. Part of the difference is that by default I scale the brightness to make the image as bright a possible, without overflowing. There are, however, other differences, and I don't know why. However, I've done many tests that pretty much convince me that my result is correct. The tests include writing a plugin that (very slowly) does a full convolution with a clamped cosine function. Though the algorithm was completely different, the results were almost identical. I wrote a fairly detailed comment about the differences on the article's website, which was flagged as spam by the blankety-blank spam filter. Unfortunately, the article is quite old, so the author hasn't responded to my earlier comments. The ER map used for shading should generally represent light sources, not colored areas. If, for instance, the ER map has a large expanse of grass, the diffuse shading will be very green, even though the grass would actually emit, through reflection, only a limited amount of green light onto an object. In some cases, it would be desirable to adjust the map's contrast to emphasize the lights over other areas. (This can be done by setting the expansion gamma to a larger value than the compression reciprocal.) It may also be useful to decrease the map's color saturation, to reduce the effect when shading colored surfaces. To keep my example simple and direct, and avoid confusing detours, I didn't make any post-shading modifications to the diffuse-shaded layer. However, in most cases I would try adjusting the brightness, contrast, saturation, and such to achieve the best result. On the off chance another programmer wants to use my transform code for some other purpose (such as computing the spherical harmonic coefficients) , as with all my PDN code, I'd be happy to provide it.

This is an important update that fixes many issues, including some crashes. It also adds JPEG XR file type support for Windows 8.1+. If you’re using the Windows Store release, you should get the update automatically within the next 24 hours. You can also force an update check by following these instructions. For the Classic release, you should be offered the update automatically within the next week or so. You can get the updater soon by going to ⚙ Settings → Updates → Check Now. You can also download and install it directly from the website. Change log: New: JPEG XR file type support (Windows 8.1+ required) Fixed: Holding Ctrl when dragging a selection with Move Selected Pixels will again leave a copy behind (but only with the mouse) Fixed crashes when saving DDS images Fixed VTF file type plugin. It was not working in 4.2 except for images that were an exact power-of-2 size on each dimension. Fixed: .BMP files can be opened even if they're not actually BMP images (they still need to be a valid WIC-supported file type such as PNG, JPEG, etc.) Fixed very bad performance when opening large images with embedded rotation metadata Fixed various crashes, such as when using File->New or Image->Resize, that sometimes happened if the previous update needed a reboot but either 1) it didn't tell you that, or 2) it did but you didn't reboot Fixed the problem that was causing the need for the aforementioned reboot in the first place (string resources file was locked by the thumbnail provider shell extension) Fixed: Text tool will no longer draw tiny text when an image uses dots-per-centimeter instead of dots-per-inch Fixed menu ordering of effect plugins that have duplicate names Fixed: The mouse wheel may now be used to scroll the Palettes menu in the Colors window (thanks @AndrewDavid for the suggestion and @toe_head2001 for the fix!) Fixed metadata handling that was preventing some images with EXIF tag 330 from being able to load Fixed metadata preservation for old images that pad EXIF string values with null terminators Fixed title bar text color when using certain custom accent colors in Windows 10 Fixed title bar accent color when Tablet Mode is enabled

Oh boy, it has been so long since I posted any images that I have almost forgotten how! Thank you all for the most encouraging comments. I am in the process of building up a small home nursery to supplement my income - long story... One of my fellow succulent addict has kindly allowed me to use his photos to create artworks. As soon as I saw his aeonium with the rain spots on it, I knew I had to create a wallpaper. I've called it Gothic Rain. I like dark & moody images & I am drawn to them in other artists too. So that you can see how it has been altered, I have added the original photo as well, as per frequent requests in the past.

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it Glassy Marbles tutorial was written by @drakaan in 2007 and is now unfortunately lost. After consulting with @welshblue, we decided to reproduce (rewrite) this tutorial based on the original text, making some changes to it. This is our work jointly. In this tutorial we will make marble like in this picture: For this tutorial, you'll need the plugins: Zoom Blur Deluxe for 4.0 by @null54 and Shape3D by @MKT (it's what makes this tutorial fairly simple to repeat). All of the other steps can be accomplished using the built-in paint.net tools and effects. Start with a new () image, preferably square (for example: 800x800px). Add some texture for the interior of the marble. Apply the Clouds () effect (Effects -> Render -> Clouds) with blue color, but you could use pretty much any texture you like: This next step is optional, but it's nice to do if you want a little more realistic-looking marble. Use Zoom Blur Deluxe effect (Effects -> Blurs -> Zoom Blur Deluxe) (or use the Sin Waves effect by @MadJik, or use the built-in Dents () effect... get creative here) to change the texture to suit your taste: Now it's time for Shape3D (Effects -> Render -> Shape3D). Set the Sphere Scaling to 1.380, use the Half Sphere Map texture, and leave the rest at default (except for Anti-alias, check the ON box and set AA-Level between 2 and 5): We now have the beginning of our marble. Lighting is what makes things look glassy, so first, we're going to make what looks like an inner highlight. With the Magic Wand () tool select the transparent area on the image and then invert (Ctrl+I) the selection. That should leave you with just the marble selected: Add a new () layer above the marble texture, Primary color should be white, and Secondary color should be fully transparent. Start your Radial Gradient ( ) in the center of the shadowed area of the marble texture, and end it on the opposite side of the marble a bit closer to the marble's center: We don't want the gradient to go all the way to the marble's edge, so use the Move Selection () tool (and hold down the Shift key) to drag the bottom-right selection nub up and to the left... basically shrinking the selection towards the upper-left corner of the canvas: Invert (Ctrl+I) the selection and press Delete to get something like this: Now, we need to soften this inner highlight a bit. Use the Gaussian Blur () effect (Effects -> Blurs -> Gaussian Blur): Next, add a new () layer above the inner highlight to create a shiny spot at the top-left portion of the marble. Choose the Brush () tool with a size of about 90-100 and Hardness 20% - One click to make a spot like this in White: If necessary, apply the Glow () effect with default settings (Effects -> Photo -> Glow) and the Gaussian Blur () effect (with a radius found experimentally) a couple of times to finish the shiny spot. Now we need to add another highlight at the top of the marble on a new () layer. This is going to be in an oval-shaped area centered on the marble's vertical axis and stretching from the top to about 2/3 of the way to the bottom. Use Ellipse Selection () tool to create this area and going to fill it with a vertical Gradient ( ) (again, white fading to transparent) from bottom to top: Use Gaussian Blur effect at a low (8-12) radius to soften the edges a bit. Repeat (Ctrl+F) if necessary. This highlight may be a bit harsh, so adjust the layer's opacity settings () until it's a fairly subdued highlight: If your texture was fairly dark, you may not need this next step, but if you have a lighter-colored texture, you'll need to add a bit of shading to get the small highlight to show up and make the marble look good. Set your colors to Black and White (), and create a new () layer above the Background layer. Select the marble's circular texture area (you can go back to the Background layer, select () transparent area, invert the selection (Ctrl+I) and come back to this new layer you just created above it). Use the Linear Gradient ( ) tool and make your gradient go from the top-left edge to the bottom-right edge: Change the blending mode of this layer to "Multiply", and adjust the opacity until it looks good: After saving, flattening, resizing, adding (in any way you like) a background and a shadow, you should be able to get something like this: Below is the outcome of following the tutorial by @welshblue: Try playing with the lighting as it masterful makes @welshblue and you will get even more impressive result: We hope you find it useful, please share your creations and suggestions with us all.

@Pixey ... nice Arnie impression 😉 Thanks. I'm not happy with the filters ... but hey ho. thanks for the rep' @ReMake Version 2 would love a f a g' after getting stressed with this. The lighting drove me mad Next up, adding a zippo lighter and then some vape pens

Hello. I'm very happy to share in this forum my images exclusively created by Paint.Net

Good onya Welshblue, just the kinda feedback I need. I'll have a look at that. I'm all over the shop mate and I'm grateful for pointers from a decent draughtsman. Thanks for giving em a look over. Thank you Seerose you are a lovely human being person and your feedback is gold. I'm looking forward to visiting your gallery soon. Thank you barbieque, you're too blanky good and much too kind :-) Thank you Lynxster, I was after a painting feel and Japanese style waves. I'm not sure you should encourage this madness my friend but you may like the following :-) The last Gastric brooding frog. Yes it was a real thing but a pelican got the last one in or around 1980. It was a very aptly named frog. :-) Fractalry. Every plugin known to man.

That was lots of fun! Many different settings that you just tweak to your own liking. Here's my go... I got so involved with this, I forgot to pick the next theme for SOTW...🙄

Thanks @LionsDragon ... holy fluff is good. I think I'll use that next time I want to let rip 😉 Looking at the abomination that's the glass above, I decided to try my hand at 'vector style' glass. Glass has been something of a holy grail PDN wise (Think ASH getting the closest IMO) and I'm more than happy with the result of what is basically a happy accident If enough people are interested in a relatively quick technique I'll cobble together a tut', sadly time and life are against me wasting my time if no one is interested. Pointless having tuts' no-one wants

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it In this tutorial, we will try some variants for creating leather textures. Required plugins: Cell Texture by @davidf Mosaic by @Tim! Hexagonal Grid by @MadJik Emboss+ by @ReMake I used 600x450 px canvas in all variations. Variant 1 Variant 2 Variant 3 Variant 4 Variant 5 Variant 6 Note: All settings described in this tutorial are approximate and depend on image size and the desirable end result.

A drawing of quartz with goethite inclusions from March 2018, just using my imagination here. I wasn't sure about the matrix for the goethite, so I made some dark, uncertain and metal-heavy matrix. The edges of the quartz may look weird, especially the hanging face at the top-right. The quartz face is supposed to be incompletely grown there. This was an interesting one to do because I had to mimic the index of refraction, which I did at the seams where the faces meet (it's intentional). I think it's interesting anyway. I haven't been active for some time except for a ghostly vote here or there; I was busy on other things. So here's a 5-minute tree from June 2019 in a cartoon style I haven't done yet. Forgive me

Thanks for the Rep' point @lynxster4 This colouring malarkey isn't as easy as it may seem. Right skin tones/ blending in - lots of things to take into account. #3 is my last go - it's so much easier making things from scratch my own way

Hello everyone, Thank you for your feedback !

A companion piece to 'Flower". And I was laughing because I had already started 'Thumper'. Here's a companion piece to 'Flower'. I thought I'd try some different techniques here, so this piece has a bit of a different look and feel. Here's.....Thumper! I hope you enjoy him!

@ReMake @lynxster4 @LionsDragon @Pixey and @barbieq25 for the rep' Thanks guys. I must admit the colour wash was more fun than it should have been. A grown up colouring book. It's definitely a style I want to experiment further with Sadly the texture on the snake text isn't mine. It's something I used whilst perfecting an animal print text style that is proving very fruitful. And one I will be making a tut' on. The textures below are mine, 100% PDN and I just want to trim the stages down a few/( lots) of steps before making it public

I finally found some time to sit and do the tutorial 😁 My effort:

Here's a short video of creating a kaleidoscope from scratch. The output is quite unexpected! Peace 232

Cool, thanks for the tut. I made a rusted screw.

Thank you @Woodsy, It was not difficult because @kaunas163 left a link to the video tutorial and I just refreshed the text and images.

Thank you @ReMake for rewriting this tutorial! And a PDF has been added!

Yes, switch to the Move Selection tool, and then use the arrow keys on your keyboard. Yes, take a look at Paste Selection in the Edit menu. Select 'Copy Selection' in Paint.NET's edit menu, paste into a text editor, change the coordinates, copy the changed text, use Paste Selection in Paint.NET's edit menu. https://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/EditMenu.html#9.2

Thank you very much @ReMake for all the work you do I know that you and @Woodsy do many helpful things for the forum 😍

Here are the steps. First, I duplicated the original layer, flipped it horizontally, rotated it 90 degree, and moved it until it lined up with bottom and right side. Then, on a new layer, I drew a right angle triangle and clicked outside the triangle, went to the duplicated/rotated layer and deleted. The result is what you see on page 1. Here's another example.

@JulioCoolio ... thanks a lot. Colour washing is strangely therapeutic - the snakeskin tutorial - almost done to my satisfaction but I think I'll be reaching out for ideas to get a pattern - it's all too symmetrical for my liking Colour Wash #2 this proves my theory that babies are awkward lil' sods ( - no wrinkles to work with) again over-worked. Must stop when I'm happy

Thanks @Woodsy and @ReMake ... I've been looking for ways to get decent irregular patterns. Good timing chaps

Thank you again @ReMake for rehosting the images for this tutorial and moving it from the Graveyard. A PDF has been added.

@welshblue! Thank you so much for your effort. Here is my result:

Links. They were probably hosted on Photobucket or something else that lost 'em. I'll repost the above images just to prove we still think your art is awesome 😊

Another orb on page 1 - only two stock photos were used in this one - fractal and landscape. The rest, however, all Paint.NET.

No sorry needed. A tut is to point the way ... alternative directions are good for us all to see ... and broaden our own horizons 😉 I like it. It's very surreal and very effective. Great colour combo' Thanks for the PDF @Woodsy

@lynxster4 ... thank you so very much. It was stressful. But in a good way. Trying to get the brain to think laterally instead of clicking a plugin ... especially when you're 'HeadShot' anyways 😁🙄 @Pixey ... thanks so much. Professional ? Humbled to read that - maybe one day ... I wish the people who want things done design wise would think that though and not quibble and barter. There comes a time when time is more precious than it used to be but they don't want to pay accordingly. Hope the family time is going well and not going too quick @Seerose ... Thank you. It's practice practice practice. I'm always happy to give a helping hand to explain things. It's building up layer upon layer @TrevorOutlaw ... nope. No jesting. I'm more proud of this piece than any other. Mainly for the reasons you said. Thanks for the ringing endorsement of my work @Woodsy ... thanks so much mate. I approached it like spraying a car ... building up lots of thin layers. In this case lots of blurring and Blend Modes to get the shine. It takes time and lots of undo but you get there. It helps having an object in front of you - although anyone coming through the backdoor seeing me staring at a shampoo and conditioner bottle would have thought I'd finally lost it 😯 The power of Blur Painting is great, but you've got to put the time in and not want a quick fix. An example below. It took 60 minutes. S3D for the shape and then about 50 layers of blurring colours. Not happy with the back, base shadow or the darkness of the whole thing but too late ... it's flattened @Apollo702 and you guys above - thanks for the Rep' points

Alright...back to ShapeMaker and Disney. Been wanting to do some more Disney characters. Flower! Hope you enjoy it!

Fine, if we're gonna argue old school here....

3D star: (Perhaps not 100% relevant to SZDXN's question but I'm not too clear about the bevel effect they require) 1. File/New image 800 by 800px. 2. Effects/Render/Gradients Galore:Shape = 6 petal flower, Dither = 0 or 1 for a more for a textured metal. 3. New layer. Set primary colour to red (for visabilty). Select shape tool six sided start. Set brush width to 1px. press & hold shift button then drag out a star shape from the top left corner and align to the gradient on layer 1. 4. Magic wand select outside the star on the shape layer. move to the gradient layer and delete. 5. Effects/Stylize/ TGAngle: Angle = - 45degrees, Colour Blend mode = Gold. Alternatively, by using the 'On object only' button in Gradients galore you could apply shading to a filled shape. That's a .png thumbnail btw. Why is .png transparency so broken now? - always showing 255,255,255,0 as black (I think it's a windows 10 bug but the old optipng still seems to work?)

You could use Red Ochre's "Object Bevel" to achieve this.

This video tutorial shows you how to use remove.bg, a website that will remove foreground object from the background, and then how to import the file from the website for Paint.NET users! Credit goes to @dipstick for the remove.bg link and giving me a tip on how to work around the size limitation for masking object in Paint.NET. In this video, I used this website, unsplash.com, which is a nice stock photo site, and have already picked a stock photo for this purpose. I utilize this website for nearly all of my photomanipulations and using remove.bg is an awesome site to use. Plug-in used in this video: Alpha Mask Alpha to Gray

Here's one possible solution, and it would retain the easier way too. #region UICode RadioButtonControl<Positions> position = 0; // [1] Image Position|On the Left|In the Center|On the Right #endregion enum Positions { Left, Center, Right } void Render(Surface dst, Surface src, Rectangle rect) { switch (position) { case Positions.Left: // Code Here break; case Positions.Center: // Code Here break; case Positions.Right: // Code Here break; } dst.CopySurface(src, rect.Location, rect); } If RadioButtonControl<TEnum> is too clumsy or confusing, a person could just continue using RadioButtonControl.