Ishi

I know another free software that has a picture batch editor that can add watermarks to all pictures selected for editing. I've tested it and it works and would apply the same watermark setting on every picture on the batch. The speed from which it completes this still depends on the size and number of your pictures. if you have 500 800x600 pictures, that could only take a little more than 10 minutes. I'm not sure if that program is allowed to be discussed on this forum though.

You might have to use some professional software for that. If you are talking about the planet terrain, I guess one paid software that comes to mind is a software called Terragen. http://planetside.co.uk/products/terragen3

Another simple but effective way to make a highlight is to just add a new top layer and draw a white line or curve on the area you want to highlight using the pen. Use some Gaussian blur and maybe lower the layer's transparency a bit.

Can you link a screenshot sample of your work? If we could see it, maybe we will get ideas of how to put reflections. My theory would be highlighting a flat-colored surface using a selection tool. Make selection on the area you want to put highlight on, using the lasso tool or the elliptical selection. Click on the Move Selection tool (the white arrow) from the Tools box, hold right mouse button and drag clockwise or counterclockwise if you want to rotate the selection. Make sure that your primary color is the same as the color of that surface inside the selection you made. Your secondary color should be white or a much lighter shade of your primary color. Then draw a gradient inside your selection. This would hopefully make a simple highlighted effect.

I kinda like vintage pictures. Lots of times that the orange/reddish effect actually enhances the picture in such an artistic way. You can use the Curves tool (Adjustments>Curves). Change the setting from Luminosity to RGB. Uncheck Green and Blue and lower the red line. This should lessen the red a bit. You can also adjust the blue a bit more. The Curves+ plugin even has more features. I'm sure other people would have other ideas on how to do this.

I don't have the skill to digitally illustrate those characters in those nice little logos though. Perhaps it would help if you used an existing picture? And maybe there is a technique to make a real picture look like if it was digitally illustrated. Maybe a real PDN pro knows a way to make this happen. Those logos make some nice profile pictures though.

Never tried that plugin myself but my understanding is that you have to rename the gif file into something with a .agif file extension before opening it on Paint.NET and just re-change the file extension to .gif after saving. You can try reading the whole thread, mate.

You can try these plugins. http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/13454-animated-image-24-agif-apng/ http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/14848-spritesheet-animation-plugin/ Just a question. How did you make that cool moving Simpsons GIF on your signature?

Well I only wish I had the skill of the real PDN pros on this site and maybe, it will take another decade for me to touch there level. And I envy that some of them can create such awesome techniques and write plugins. Dunno, I enjoy using Paint.NET than Photoshop because its not as complex and it does the job but we have equal creativity here than those who languish with Photoshop. But as I go deeper to exploring this forum and learning new stuff, the more that I will owe guys who have helped me one way or the other. I initially asked help on how to create fireworks on this thread and what do you know, Red Ochre came to show what his plugin can do and later on, Techno Robbo showed up and wrote his own fireworks plugin in response to someone whom he thinks wanted a challenge.

My thread has provoked such creativity. Thanks for this TechnoRobbo..

New Year's not only gonna end with a simple boom on this forum. I smell the smoke of an impending showdown between some of the PDN greats in here. So to those who would want to see the show, lets just stay at the side, gaze at the lights and enjoy the spectacle.

Installing Microsoft software always mandates you install a LOT of things and components that you don't really need (example; Windows Live Essentials, MS Office).

I have used Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder to record my video tutorial for MS Paint months ago. I find it easy to use and saves the captured screen video to a .wmv format that you can then import and edit on Windows Movie Maker which I did. Try it out. Its simple and not a hassle like other screen recording software I used.

Definitely a tutorial to follow. :Tutorials: Man, you should have published a tutorial on this or ask somebody willing to do so. Best if its a short video tutorial AND to promote your plugin. I'll try that Cobweb. Thanks again.

Those should come in very handy Red ochre. So, how's it done?

That wasn't a bad technique pdnnoob. We'll have to see if we could find something that renders a more realistic firework explosion splatter though.

Its about time someone publishes a tutorial on this.

Hello, I still consider myself to be a Paint.NET newbie and I was wondering if anybody knows how to create fireworks. New Year is coming in less than 2 days and I want to create a greeting card for the holiday. Wanna celebrate the New Year, with a big colorful splash of colors on the virtual sky. So far, I have not yet found a way to create the classic firework explosion so can anyone help me or suggest something? Thanks.

One minor request? Is it possible to have an option to disable the "dancing ants" animation? I (and others) am kinda used to a selection that does not have the dancing ants animation. Thanks for the wonderful software.

Thanks for the explanation TechnoRobbo.

That does not explain why I have not had as much delay issues with other plugins, despite my specs, except when I'm working with very huge images. I can't be sure. You might be testing this on the PDN v.4 alpha builds, not sure if you test this on PDN 3.5.11 and below.

Just tried v.5.0.4. Still the same issue. Tried it on the very same object and no improvements on the speed unfortunately.

Thanks for the reply. My specs are Windows 7 Starter SP1, 2GBs of RAM and an Intel Atom Processor 1.60 GHz. running Paint.NET 3.5.11. The one one your video has higher specs and was using alpha build of Paint.NET 4. Hovering the mouse over the plugin does not display its details on Paint.NET 3.5.11 unlike on the alpha build of 4.0 you are using. I did mention I was using EFX 5.0.3 but I forgot to mention that it was also the first version I tried. Here's a screenshot. I again tried it on a 218x157 object. Turns out, it would still work even inside a selection. I then tried it without any selection active in my current layer where the object is sitting. It took more than 20 seconds to process either way in both attempts. I guess my specs had some trouble handling it, really.

The effect of Edge Fader Extreme is similar to that of Alpha Blur which I had just recently added after seeing one tutorial video from Yellowman. The advantage of EFX from Alpha Blur is that it does not need to be used on a selection and its somewhat easier to use. I have tried v. 5.0.3. My suggestion is a rollback of the user interface. It looked better, neater and more simplified to me when it was on version 4.x. Instead of a little preview window, it should preview on the object on the layer itself and would just undo itself when cancelled or closed. And it should have a Cancel button too. Don't know why it was taken off. The slider should have something like an "intensity" label next to it and I don't know why it looks like a horizontal scroll bar now. Like Drewdale, I also had a problem with the speed of its processing. It took maybe close to 20 seconds to blur a 280x300 object on a 800x600 canvas with a setting of 38. I am using Windows 7 SP1, on a netbook with 2GBs RAM and an Intel Atom Processor but I did not have this issue with most of the plugins I tried. I use PDN version 3.5.11. I see good potential with this plugin. Hope you'll continue to make it better.

I don't get what exactly you want to happen but I assume you want the gray transparent layer to color the white background behind the Paint.NET logo (the rectangular picture with the paintbrush and sky in it) and text without actually altering the original color of the logo and text. In my attempt to do this, I used blue instead of gray and this is what I came up with. I had the logo with text on the base layer of course. I created a top layer and set its mode to Darken. On this Darken Layer, I drew a straight, blue, horizontal line at the middle. That will serve as a guide. I used the Eraser to erase any segments of the line that crosses the logo drawing and that little red gradient that is between E and T of the Paint.NET text. The fun thing with the Darken mode layer is that any color you paint here, avoids any black color on the layer below. I then used a brush with varying sizes to paint across the background which is so easy around the black text. I used very small brush sizes to carefully paint blue around the rectangular logo picture. I had to retrace the tiny "TM" text with a black pencil. I merged both layers and tada!!! Its done... EDIT: An easier way is to just draw a color-filled rectangle on the upper half of the top Darken mode layer and just use an eraser to clear out the part with the logo and the red gradient between E and T.