ECPainter

Will do. Thank you!

I don't get blocks of white or black. What's happening is that white parts of the image is being eliminated along with the white background when I eliminate the white background. I was just curious if I could cut out an image and then have the new background be something other than white.

When I remove the background in order to "cut out" an object and have it as a stand-alone image, I end up with a white background that I end up using the magic wand to get rid of when I want to use the image later. Not usually a problem. But when the object has any white in it that matches the white background, it gets erased along with the background. Is there a way of cutting out an image and then putting it on a solid background that isn't white, or any other color that's within the image, so I can eliminate the background without eliminating parts of the image?

<snip> It's the only one where the link for the plugin was clearly displayed. Others have a "Download Now" button that takes close inspection to realize it's for something else. I've learned to be careful of those.

That's the page I was referring to when I said I couldn't get past step 3 because I didn't get the option to "open" it and do what step 3 says to do.

They aren't zipped. It's not a zip file that I downloaded (at least it doesn't look like one). It was a dll file. It's called Feather.dll. It's appearance is a white rectangle with a picture of 2 gears on it, and when I click on Properties on it, it says it has 11 files in it. Clicking it simply prompts an invite to pick an app to open it with. I don't know how to get to the 11 files inside in order to drag and drop them into the Effects directory,

Well, it wasn't as easy as I'd hoped. I made it to step 3 where it said that clicking "open" would show all the files that were downloaded. That didn't happen. What happened instead is an error message saying that the files are used by the operating system and that editing or modifying them could damage my system, along with an invitation to choose which app I wanted to use to open them with. Paint.net didn't even show up in the list of apps. I do have Paint.net installed. So what should I do instead?

Thank you! I didn't know there would be so many steps involved. I copied the page to a Word document to read at home. Let's hope I do it right!

I've heard many good things about this plugin and decided to download it, but have a quick question about installing it. I downloaded it to a flash drive while using a public library computer. I have paint.net installed on my computer at home, which isn't connected to internet. Now how do I "plug in" this plugin to the paint.net program from this point? Do I just move it over to my computer's desktop and simply click on it? Or does it need to be moved somewhere specific first?

Always nice to have more than one perspective! Thank you to you and Eli both! I will also take a look at the links Cc4FuzzyHuggles referenced. I have sooooo much to learn, but now I have a good start on what I'm trying to accomplish. It's a good springboard to the rest of it.

I tried using the Magic Wand now. When you say to adjust the Tolerance as needed, how exactly do I know when I've adjusted it correctly? I adjusted it to where the outline of the person is what has the moving dotted lines. Otherwise, I see dotted lines within the image if I turn it too high, and not the entire image is outlined if too low. Well, I went with just the outline of the image and nothing else and it worked! Thanks, Eli!!! Now to my next problem (they never end!): When I wanted to reduce the size of the image of the person against the background, I used the resize tool and specified a 50% reduction. It ended up reducing not only the person image, but also the background. I thought layers were adjusted separately, so this shouldn't happen! Then I clicked "undo" to change them back, and then made sure the layer windows only had a checkmark in the one with the person, and then tried resizing again. Same thing happened. Both layers were reduced in size by 50%. How do I change the size of the image without reducing the background layer? EDIT: I also tried opening an another layer and then copying/pasting the person image into that, but all I ended up with in the new layer was a blank. I didn't know what to do after that and gave up. All I want to accomplish at this point is resizing the image that will be placed on a background without reducing the background size as well.

I tried doing what you said. In step 2, I noticed I don't have "Menu". I looked around and found the Import from File option under "Layers". So I clicked that and it put the person image on top of the background, along with the solid white background it had as a cutout. After I saved the image (as PNG), the solid white blob didn't go away. MSPaint makes it easy to get rid of the white background. All I have to do is click "Transparent Selection", and the white background goes away leaving only the image, making it easy to position. How do I accomplish the same thing in Paint.net?

Thank you! I copied what's in that link over to a Word Document and will try to follow the steps. But the removal of a background isn't really my main concern, although it may come in handy later. I've been acquiring pre-cut images with no background, and also have used MSPaint to cut out images. But right now, I am trying to take those pre-cut images and simply add them to another background. With MSPaint, it simply a matter of selecting the item and dragging it to its desired location and then clicking away from the image. What is the method of accomplishing the same thing in Paint.net?

Hi everyone! I'm brand new here and just installed the free version of Paint.net on my computer last night because I heard it was better than MSPaint. I thought the similarity of names would mean they would be pretty similar, so I'm surprised to be having problems with it. What I want to do is simple, at least in MSPaint. I want to take a background image, such as a landscape, and then take a cutout of a smaller image, such as a person, and place it in the background image. With MSPaint, it was just a matter of select, copy, paste, and then click on "Transparent Selection". All done! But with Paint.net, I don't get those options. Reading forum posts about this and also the instructions online make it sound much more complicated. I've read that the "magic wand" is used to make things transparent. But when I use it, it only seems to select part of the image I want to move, and sometimes selects things beyond the object I want to move. If it's a person, I click the magic wand, and maybe only the head is selected, and sometimes maybe only the upper body. I had to give up on the magic wand. I also heard about "layers" which is an option I clicked on several times, but I never saw anything happen so I don't know how to go about using it. Then I took a cutout of a person that was already on a solid white background and pasted that onto the background. I got the entire person's image, but surrounded by a large checkerboard. I've heard that translates into being transparent later on. That's fine, but how am I supposed to accurately position the person on the background if the area around the person is obscured by the checkerboard? It blocks out the area I'm positioning the person in! Anyway, that's where I am now. I also watched a Youtube video about this and it was so confusing that it lost me. I'm thinking that if MSPaint is so simple, and Paint.net is better, than there must be a better way than what I've been told. Can someone help me?