Ishi

Thanks Barbieq. Last time I checked it yesterday, it still wasn't up.

So when do we get the voting poll running?

Thanks Barbieq. I appreciate the fact that you did try to explain how they were made. I don't use Bezier curves. I'd just use a line tool to make curves manually though I think its edges wouldn't look clean. I'm impressed on how neatly you've made them. They are almost vector graphics like. I get the concept. Its not complicated as it seems. I should try it sometimes. But I'm the lazy type. If it was me, I'd just have one master image of the flower for instance and just duplicate them on different layers and try to distort and resize each one of them manually so they differ from each other. Remember my autumn pic? That's what I did with the maple leaves there. hahaha

You're very much welcome Barbieq. The new one looks very neat as well. Mind doing a mini tutorial on how to draw those pink flowers?

I think this idea deserves attention. I too have had issues with the layer thumbnails being too small that I have trouble seeing what's in those layers unless I hide and unhide it.

That's an interesting technique there BoltBait. Didn't know about that. Thank you.

The best thing I can think is you can crop it but its height will be severely reduced. You might have to do manual edit of the picture's contents to try to move them so they will be included in the area that will be retained after cropping.

Thanks for the support Seerose, Limon, Helen and Maximilian. @Lynxster I get those moments that upon experimenting with plugins, a cool effect was suddenly made. For instance, while toying with the Water Reflection plugin on the water surface, those nice looking, jittery, diagonal stripes were made. I thought, why not use that to make cloud formations on the sky as well? Somehow it worked and added such a nice texture for the sky which kinda gives you the illusion of the "flag" having these folds as well. Part of my art is miracle by accident. I am not a professional artist so I can't picture in my mind a photographic layout of everything I want a particular artwork to look like because these "accidents" and new ideas come spot on while working. @Seerose I appreciate the continuous support. That means so much! @Limon Thanks for suggesting the Water Reflection plugin. I wasn't aware of it but it helped improve my latest artwork as explained on my above paragraph. @Helen Glad to hear you were captivated by it. I like scenery. Imagination is enough to take everyone of us somewhere else, even on horizons we never thought could exist. @ Maximillian The motivation that I'm getting makes me a little more proud and happy on this gloomy life. Hopefully, there would be more ideas along the way. The poem was written by our national hero the night before his execution on the dooming end days of the Spanish colonial period. It is said that he hid the piece of paper where the poem was written on into a lamp that he handed down to his sisters before his execution so it can be smuggled away from the Spanish jail guards.

Superb result Barbieq! I like your choice of colors and its very neat. Your technique with those curly lines makes neat and simple-looking "filigrees". The Dickie Birds look adorable. But you kinda missed to color a spot on the tummy of the blue mother bird. Anyways, they look great. They fit nicely on greeting cards and children's book illustration. Maybe you should make some. I am somewhat inspired by your technique.

I have a pretty straightforward solution. 1. Use your already edited project of this on PDN. (The one that you showed above) 2. Use Magic Wand to select the RED of the image and make sure that the Magic Wand's flood mode is set to Global. 3.CTRL+I to invert the selection. This would now the white lines of the drawing. 4. Add a new layer and make sure this new layer is selected. Fill your selection with white using Paint Bucket tool. 5. Use AA's Assistant under Effects>>Object>>AA's Assistant. This will reduce the jaggedness of the edges. You may tweak the settings right there and see what makes the best result. 6. Use a soft Eraser to erase the eye area where some details were lost. 7. If you're happy with the results, Flatten the image.

Very clean works. About your latest artwork, what did you use to create that? I like the coloring of it. It seems easy to the eyes. Looks almost like vector graphics.

So what did you use for the animated one? AnimGif? By the way, you seem to like cats. I find myself obsessed with our pet cats.

Well thanks Lynxster. The style in itself is experimental and the ideas usually come spot on whilst working. There are around 28 or so layers on this one. Every small detail has to be emphasized so they would add something to build the whole scene. (Latest artwork near the bottom of the previous page.)

So this is the unresized,full sized version of my SOTW submission for this week. As mentioned on that thread, this artwork is 100% PDN. The sea was once again made through Flood (Photoshop plugin) via 8bf Filter and though the combination of Water Reflection and Wobble plugins. Sunrise and sunsets seem to have prominent appearance on my artwork but it illuminates my love for colors. I thought I should incorporate a dreamworld element on my flag representation on SOTW entry and somehow it resulted into this. I think behind all that, it represents something more. Hope you like it. Región del sol querida, Perla del mar de oriente, nuestro perdido Edén..... (excerpt from the poem "Mi Ultimo Adios")

Here is my submission for this entry. Its 100% PDN. The sea was once again made through Flood (Photoshop plugin) via 8bf Filter and though the combination of Water Reflection and Wobble plugins respectively. Its actually an artistic interpretation and representation of the Philippine flag.

I don't know if its possible to include a plugin diagnostic tool on PDN. What it does is basically tracks down how the plugins are loaded and lists the top ones that took the longest to be loaded into the memory. It saves the report into a log file, very much like the crash log file. This way, you can choose which culprit, delay causing plugins you can move away from the Effects directory. This plugin diagnostic tool can be included somewhere under the Settings.

A variant of that idea has recently been discussed on this thread: http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/32475-plugin-indexing-for-faster-startup/ As for now, the best thing we can do is move the individual DLLs of the plugins we do not use in the Effects folder to another folder. I personally made a folder named "Unused" inside my Effects directory and that's where I keep the DLLs of unused plugins that I may need to pull out for future use.

One of the most recognizable riffs on rock guitar I see. Well Barbieq, I love summer, not only the fantastic sunshine, the colors and the weather but generally those sunny memories I would associate to the season that leave those short and timely instances of joy and jubilation in my constantly burdened mind. I write about summer a lot in my poetry and even my sig tells you that I love the sunshine. And Seerose thanks or the compliment and since I love colors, I find myself fascinated with flowers too. Did some amateur photography on flowers using a digital camera and If I enhance them with PDN to blur areas outside the focus, they become more DSLR-like pictures.

Thanks Eli, Limon and Sozo. @Limon thanks for the suggestion about the water reflection plugin. It would have made a more compelling result. Would bear that in mind next time. Had another seascape artwork left unfinished. Actually, there's an island like that not far from where I live that kinda looks like that as well. Its shaped like a turtle. A few times, we had trips along the highway on the side of a cliff, overlooking the island from below and its such a remarkable place. Worth if I revisit next summer. I must have subconsciously referenced to that when I made the artwork. But its such a shame that I've never been to that island when its not too far offshore. Anyway, I did not put much effort to this seascape. Its merely a "filler" to my gallery. I intended my all-PDN painting on a previous post to get more attention though.

The new uploads are excellent especially the one with a laser beam. I like the Halloween pictures too and the fruits.

Try installing updates for Windows 10. Maybe that will fix the issue. Also, try removing the DLL's of the plugins you don't use and move them to another folder.

If this is the latest version of Paint.NET which is 4.06, I have been experiencing crashing and failing to launch issues with it on my Windows 8.1 as well. The solution that was given to me on this forum was to rename the Shapes folder in C:\Program Files\paint.net. I renamed the Shapes folder to Shapesx. I could not use custom shapes at the moment but at least, that seems to have rid me off the crashing and failure to launch issues.

The only way I can think of Paint.NET having a black or gray background is that if a third-party Windows theme is installed that makes every opened window with the same color scheme and overrides the background color settings of those applications. I do not like using such third party themes. However, I do think it would be of no harm if a future version of Paint.NET gets a native black or gray color scheme but its not very likely. I have used a program called Foxit Reader for PDFs and it has an option to change the color scheme to Blue, Yellow, Purple or Black.

This will make it easier for you. That and related videos will teach you.:

You could use the "hide all" layers feature in a scenario such as there are 25 layers, you want to merge 3 of them but the rest is distracting your view of the isolated bunch you want to work with at the moment. I accept the suggestion that the current active layer could be excluded when you do this command. We don't have layer groups like in Photoshop so I think a Hide All and Show All feature for layers would be useful in some situations when you want to isolate your work and focus on a few layers before moving to the rest of the project. I support this idea and thanks Huggles for linking my suggestion thread. I see no harm if this is implemented, only a new advantage with an added feature.