Nai

You're welcome, Pixey ! Here are official websites to that two layer mask plug-ins... Fluid Mask : http://www.vertustech.com/fluidMask/overview.html Perfect Mask 8 : http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/mask8/ Somehow both of it are shareware. Anyway, buying either one of it is still less painful than buying Photoshop ( just for the sake of getting the benefit of layer mask ).

Ads mock-up poster, image manipulations on 100% PDN : Sources : Mushroom house : Mushroom + Door + Window Clouds : PNG Set1+PNG Set2 Light Ray Magical Effects & Pixie's Dusts :Brushes1+Brushes2+Brushes3+Brushes4+Brushes5+Brushes6 Candy Stick Paint Jars Background Paint Splashes 1+2

Agree with you, Pixey ! This plugin is really awesome and a very good reason why I never and don't want to delete the .8bf files that I kept in my netbook since 2011 ( when I was still used Vicman's Photo Editor ).Now I can re- use my favorite filters- Optikverve Lab's virtualPhotographer and Xero's Porcelain. There're many great Photoshop plugins out there ( including layer mask ) that can be run on Paint.Net because of Null54's hard work. And here are my new favorite lists : 1.Luce by Amico Perry. ( This is for making light rays. From my experience, I'm suggesting that Paint.Net 4.0 users installing Luce2, on x86 folder which is compatible to Paint.Net 4.0, rather than the earlier Luce or Luce2 on x64 folder ) 2. Lens Flare and Glow by Axion 3. Diffuse Glow by Richard Rosenman 4. MezzoForceIce by 2manekenai ( for those who are crazy on making real-looking ice cubes ) 5. Snowflakes by VanDerLee. Sorry for not including URL links, for the time being just go google or stumble upon.

Congratulations to the winners ! And thanks also to those who pick my works as their choices. Zillion thanks for you too, Daniels, for still picking my ideas as the topic for this round. And I'm sorry to all participants for the mis-communication that happened because I didn't convey the message clearly to Daniels. Cheerio ! XOXO.

Non-destructive mode star glow using Red Ochre's Noise Choice. Destructive mode star glow using TR's Star Filter. Background image : http://pixabay.com/en/wedding-together-federal-government-193519/

I'm sorry, for taking so many spaces right here: Promotional Poster... For those who want to see the essential materials : Front Cover Of The Book Stock images: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Satay_chicken.JPG http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nasi_Kuning_Ibu_Sulastri.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bakso.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ais_kacang.jpg Company's Logo Original Picture : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pinisi-10.JPG Font : Zamrud & Khatulistiwa. The Ice Block : http://blog.btibrandinnovations.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/ice_block.jpg

Thanks chimay12321 ! But that doesn't stop me from withdrawing. Oh yeah, I feel 20 pounds lighter after the withdrawal.

Before going even further, thank you chimay12321 for your objectivity and professionalism. This is the first time I'm swaying away from my comfort zone and where my core energy is- youthful, innocent art and pastel colours-to do some experiments with shaded, bold and striking colours. I learned a lot from you and your comments. I realized that I have switched on the fire or hitting the bee hives, so with all humbleness I'm officially withdrawing myself from the competition. By God Will, there're will be a great lad who will take over my place in the competition, sooner or later. Cheerio !

Dear Drewdale, Before going even further, FYI, I come from the same 'nest' as that fateful 'bird'. There're nothing more terrible than seeing your country flag lied on the ground and burned in flame, but not able to extinguish the fire. Only God does know. Reading your last sentence, I think and dare to bet that you didn't see what I have posted in these two threads : http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/29326-sotw111-submissions-clouds/ http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/29341-expressing-sympathies-and-concerns-to-those-onboard-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh17/

Me... But wait, I'm not interested in becoming the contender... Because I have different talents and strengths than her. And I'm an underdog. Somehow I'm still considering my participation just for conveying the important message in this siggie banner. ( Latest update : Banner being removed, since I decide to withdraw from the competition. ) Update : Officially withdrawing from the competition.

My attempts : Playing with tinted colours:- Playing with shaded colours:- Background image can be found right here : http://designshack.net/articles/freebies/weekly-freebies-50-wonderful-water-and-ice-textures Those stars were generated by neither TR's nor Madjik's plug-ins. Just playing with this tutorial : http://pureromance88.ucoz.com/news/dreamy_sparkling_photo_effect/2010-04-26-57

wow64 & Barbieq27, thanks for the comments and praise.

Thanks Pixey ! I owe other people's Pinterest account and Hannah Hathaway's blogs for becoming a huge inspiration for me to do this. Hopefully it can motivate other members/Paint.Net users to have their own Pinterest accounts, so that Rick & Co hard works and generosity going viral. BTW and honestly, you're cute like a button !

Midora, thanks a lot ! That's a benefit for some members and a time-saving cross-cutting for me. Honestly, I never use it before you mentioned it. I'm just relying on my spatial abilities to recognize colours, just like Munsell and his students ( for example, PSC's John Kitchener and the late Sci-Art Founder Katryn Kaliatz ) doing/did. Spent about one to two hours for doing colour harmonies like in the picture above, using colour picker tool to pick up the colours that I intuitively attracted to and put it to the blank colour pallete.

So grateful that it can help you. Wobble+ gaussian blur are the way I can find to mock Photoshop's iris blur effects. Photoshop tutorial using iris blur :http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/iris-blur-cs6/

Red ochre, I'm so grateful you love it too. Welcome !

Colour Grid Creation Art on 100% Pdn. Don't know where to put this, but I'll put it right here

My own interpretation of the tutorial - " Romantic Sea Light " Bigger size : http://s25.postimg.org/wixgs3hlr/Soft_Sea_Light.png

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it ( Updated October 26, 2014 ) Who says we can't create a soft, romantic, dreamy picture ( with additional special effect-coloured aura ) with Paint.Net ? Two floral bouquet pictures in the collage below are the proofs. Since the original blog post is not available anymore, here are the salvaged blog post to be posted right here : ************SALVAGED BLOG POST************* Intro : Like many other photo-editing tutorials for Paint.Net in this blogs, this tutorials also inspired and motivated by GIMP and Photoshop tutorials- by both Eric R. Jeschke ( The GIMP Guru ) and Hannah Hathaway ( We Live Happily Ever After ). This tutorial will show you how to make a picture that not only having a feeling of soft, romantic and dreamy ( or ethereal, to some of you ) quality, but also having slightly coloured vintage tints and coloured ‘ aura ‘. By using multiple layering technique, the original picture will remain untouched until the time you flattened the image and saved it into jpeg or png format. And if you save it in pdn (Paint.Net native file ) format, you can always fine-tuning or replacing any layer to suits your need; and so, can turns it into a massive photo-editing template that make your life easier- in case you’re editing tons of pictures in a month. Process : 1. Open/load the image with Paint.Net. Resize the picture if necessary. 2. Set a new layer. Name it ‘Tinted’. Then paint the layer with white colour- either with solid colour fill or gradient fill. If you choose to paint the layer with gradient fill options, set the secondary colour to transparent/alpha white. Set the layer blending mode to ‘Screen’, with opacity set to 71. Apply Gaussian Blur to the layer, in a range of 100-150. After that, select Effects> Photo>Glow, and set the glow with Radius = 7, Brightness= 65 and Contrast =78. Repeat the option twice, right after the first application; if you opted for solid colour filling. There are no repetition for gradient filling options. ( Side note : Interested with the rose bouquet picture ? The picture can be found right here ) 3. Set a new layer. Name it ‘White Vignette’ Draw a selection area ( preferably an oval ). Go to ‘Invert Selection’ right after finishing it. Paint the selected area with your favourable colour. Blur the selected area with Gaussian Blur. Set it in 120-150 range. Then glow it using ‘Glow’ option ( Radius = 7, Brightness = 7, Contrast = 78 ). Here are how the layer looked like after blurring and glowing : Go to Effects >Distort and choose ‘Wobble’, set the value as seen in the picture above. Blur it with Gaussian Blur. Set the blur strength to 50. Deselect the area afterwards and repeat Gaussian Blur with the same value. You will get something like this : Go to Effects >Distort and choose ‘Wobble’, set the value as seen in the picture above. Blur it with Gaussian Blur. Set the blur strength to 50. Deselect the area afterwards and repeat Gaussian Blur with the same value. You will get something like this : Set the layer blending mode to ‘Glow’, with opacity 225. 4. Set another layer, name it ‘Aura’. Draw an oval with 7 pixels line. Apply Gaussian Blur to the layer. Set the strength to 25 and do the blurring twice. Glow the aura with ‘Glow’. Set the glow until you get hazy ring ( in this case purple hazy ring ) or coloured haze at the area where the shape line used to be. Adjust the colour with any saturation altering options available ( build-in or optional plug-in ). Adjust the layer opacity to 186, or just left it in full opacity ( for those who opted for using gradient filling in ‘Tinted’ layer. Apply the wobble effect to the aura if you like. 5. This step is optional. Duplicate the picture and make that duplicated layer into contrast mask, so that the picture will have a better contrast. How to do so can be found right here. 6. Fine tuning any layers you want until you satisfy with the outcome. Then save the picture. Here are the same picture after some fine tuning, and a replacement at ‘Tinted’ layer ( On that moment I replaced the solid colour filling with gradient filling, on an experiment with options that I can try until getting the right one ) So, that's it ! Useful for wedding or graduation/convocation pictures. I'll be glad to see your results right here. All the best !

My first try... From this : http://www.1zoom.net/Flowers/wallpaper/362282/z1401.5/ To this : In attempt to imitate one of the photographic effect that you usually get when using Optikverve's Virtual Studio. Just PM me if anybody want a tutorial.

This tutorial inspires me to do my siggie banner :

The first try... All pdn but the Plaid background : http://mycutegraphics.com/backgrounds/plaid-backgrounds2.html

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it How To Do A Smart Sharpening With Layering Technique Introduction : In my first tutorial, apart from showing you how to reduce the noise caused by JPEG artifacts in internet-saved pictures I'm also showing you how to do an edge sharpening without making noise more noticable using Sharpen+ plug-in. In this tutorial, I'll share with you how to do the same type of sharpening- sharpen the picture edges at Luminosity channel without clipping to colour channels- this time by using layering technique called ' Smart Sharpening'. This technique is well-known among experienced Photoshop and GIMP users. They used a channel mask to guard the area apart from the edges, clipping the mask to Luminosity channel layer and do the sharpening exclusively at the same channel before clipping all layers to make a new composite image. Since Paint.Net got different features from both software, can we do this technique in Paint.Net ? This question whirled in my mind since my first day with Paint.Net. I love Paint.Net and preferring smart sharpening technique to other sharpening techniques at the same time, but I can't see the possibilities in Paint.Net. But I keep thinking positive and believing there're will be some way to do it. After following other photo-editing tutorials in Paint.Net forums, especially about solving compose-decompose issues and how to manipulate 'merge down layer' command, the bulb lightened up again. I can see the way to do it and starting to experiment with the plug-ins suggested for composing-decomposing pictures. This tutorial is a result from the experiment I did and also an evidence that Paint.Net also can accomplish what Photoshop and GIMP usually did and doing, but in a slightly different way. This tutorial was adapted from GIMP tutorial by Eric. R. Jeschke. For this tutorial, you'll need three plug-ins installed in your Paint.Net ( with download links for downloading 😞 1. Extract Channel 2. High Pass Filter 3. Alpha Mask Process 1. Load the image/picture to Paint.Net. Still remembering this picture ? This picture is the one I used in contrast mask tutorial, with the contrast mask being flattened and saved. 2. Duplicate the layer twice. And then rename that two layers. The top one as 'Sharpening Mask' . This layer is for the making of sharpening channel mask -to guard the area but the edges of the picture from sharpening effects. Then, rename the below one as 'Channel-L'. This layer will going to be our smart sharpening layer, the luminosity channel. And will be clipped/merged with the sharpening 'channel' mask after the final step in the making of channel mask. After renaming both layers, simply extracting the channel for both layers with 'Extract Channel' command. Choose 'CIELAB-L'. And look at the changes happened to your editing history board. Both layers successfully being changed to Luminosity channel. Now, we are ready for the making of sharpening ‘channel’ mask and smart-sharpening layer. 3. Making sharpening ‘channel’ mask. i) Keep staying in Sharpening Mask channel and then go for edge detection : This is how the layer looked like after being manipulated : Use ‘Level’ command to adjust the black and white area, so that you can do your best to exclude noises from being sharpened too. The black area is the area that being guarded from sharpening effect that happened later on and the opposite area ( the edges ) is the desirable area. ii) Go for ‘High Pass’ Filter. This filter needed for feathering the edges. Adjust the setting like this : Different pictures, different needs so it’s depending on your settings. Make sure Sharping image and Greyscale box being ticked and High Pass Sharpen pane being set before clicking OK. And then adjusting the black and white area again with Level command. iii) Set the Sharpening mask as invisible ‘channel’ mask by using alpha mask. Copy the sharpening mask to the clipboard before going to ‘Alpha Mask ‘ A prompt box will come up and look like this : Make sure there’s a tick at ‘Paste from Clipboard’ options before clicking OK. Now, the black area disappeared from the sharpening mask layer, and only white area/the edge was left. We’re done with Sharpening ‘channel’ mask layer, and now a time to clip/anchor the mask with Channel-L layer. 4. Clipping the ‘channel’ mask. Choose ‘Merge Down’ command at Layers box ( the fourth from lower right /left ), and the ‘channel’ mask disappears because it was merged with Channel-L layer in the process. Set the blending mode to Overlay and adjusting the transparency of the layer. This time you can see the layer blending with the background. ( Notes : a) To make sure that the ‘Merge Down’ command is successful in clipping the ‘channel’ mask, the ‘channel’ mask ( Sharpening Mask ) layer should be placed on the top of Channel-L layer. b) If you want to save the image file in .pdn format so that you can edit the image file layers at any time, it’s recommended that you rename the Channel-L layer to ‘Smart Sharpening’ -especially when your image file is multi-layered. ) 5. Apply sharpening effect on the Channel-L/smart-sharpening layer. Choose build-in sharpening effect or unsharp mask to the layer. I’m choosing build-in sharpening effect, with the maximum value settings ( 20 ) for three times. And now, here's the picture after applying the smart-sharpening layer : The original image : The original image after applying Sharpen+ command : The original image after applying build-in sharpening effect without the smart sharpening layer ( Value set to 20 ) : Before After Before After Before After All the best !