Darty

That actually works pretty well to mix op the layers. Did some tests with different settings and it's able to hide the differences in zoom, where many objects/lines on picture are broken. This will save lots of manual selecting/blurring... Thanks!

I'm have several pairs of images, where 1 of each pair is damaged. I want to replace this with areas from the second image. Do note: The color/brightness and zooming of the second image is slightly different. What I do: 1: Try to match the contrast/color accordingly; 2: Create a new layer and delete the damaged spots. 3: merge them nicely. And there is the small problem. Feather doesn't do the job, as the zooming is a little off. Using Gaussian Blur does the trick, but I (have to?) manually select the border everywhere to apply this effect, unlike Feather. The images are big, so it takes me a lot of time to do this manually and equally everywhere. Is there some way I can use the blur effects on transparent edges automatically (like the feather plugins), or can I easily select just x pixels from the border all around the object, to apply the blur effect on (like invert selection, but only for the border, x pixels)?

Oh yea, my bad. It's only a problem when the image did actually have the checkered background (like a printscreen of the transparent project) which was not the case here.

Or, if you copy that content from another layer, make sure to only select/copy the "object" itself. If you copy everything (rectangle), then it also copies the transparent area with it and it'll cover your image when pasting on the same/a higher layer.

Sorry, I've never used Paint.Net for Text (yet), so I won't be able to help you get answers for those problems. That could be possible, if you use small objects, then it'll be harder to see. The demo image Eli used was big enough to see it. You can use a new big text-object, just to test the effects on a bigger scale. Use BA to smoothen the round edges (longer horizontal/vertical lines) and AA or Feather (I prefer this) to "Fade In". Use a bigger number to Fade In more and see the result. In the past I've tried a bigger Feather amount to try to hide the edges, but this doesn't work at all. BA fixed this and is enough already. Although this has no option to fade in at all, so I use Feather with 1 too (depending on image sometimes 2). High Feather values aren't really needed, unless you want people to be able to see through a bigger amount of the surroundings of an object (For example a circle of light, without an obvious round border).

That depends on the amount you want to be transparent. Basic Antialias just smoothens the longer lines, but there's no option to do this for 2 or more pixels deep into the image. AA or Feather can do this, although they don't make the longer lines smooth, resulting in still seeing those blocks along a curve. If you want to make the surroundings more transparent, deeper into the text, then use both (starting with BasicAntialias of course). TIP: You can just try it out to see what it does and how both situations turn out.

Plugin Manager / "Get Addins" -- Looking into this for a post-4.0 release. At the very least we should finally be able to end all the questions of "how do I install a plugin?" ^ This has already been mentioned in the Popular Feature Requests topic. So the idea isn't new. What you mentioned after isn't discussed as far as I know. It could be a good option, so the downloaded plugins work for people in any situation.

I want to jump in here again. Soften the edges? If you look closely to the top of P and h and in the rounding of h/o, you can still clearly see pixel row differences. As mentioned in this topic a smoother plugin would be Basic Antialias. It smoothens those pixels over a longer range, creating a more natural curve. Explore for yourself.

Another thing you can try is using different tools to change your skin color (Coloreffects/Brightness/Contrast) close to the color you need and then blend your head on the body using the gradient tool. Getting the perfect color is quite hard and the main problem is the line you'll see on the connection-border. Take some extra neck-space on either of the images (as a part needs to fade). Select the build-in gradient tool, setting colormode to transparencymode. Then, just above or below the connection, draw a short line in a vertical way towards the connection and notice what happens. After that, slide the pointers to your need. The longer the line, the longer the fade. The closer to the connection, the stronger the fade. I use this too when I need to connect some bodyparts, usually the same person on different images from different angles, where lighting isn't the same. This works for me. You could give it a try and see if this works out well enough for your needs.

That's basically what I do, but then in Paint. Eraser: The Line is for longer distances/curves and Pencil for somewhat complexer places. Lasso Tool: Custom Select (instead of Rectangle Select, to remove the remainings of background). Although Paint.Net is a very great application, for purely painting I still prefer Paint. Both ways to cut out an object will do after all. Now just hope CRayChosen1 is able to work something out himself for future images. Transparent images are trendy!

Watched the video, it looks very nice. Still has a lot of 'manual' tweaking in it though, which I now do with the Line/Pencil in Paint itself. Magic Wand and Alpha Cutter are nice for backgrounds/objects with mostly the same color to define the cutting positions, but usually it's very complex. For now I'll stay my own boss and decide where to remove the background myself. May be a bit more work, but it works for sure. Note that many images also need small holes to be created, depending on the position of the person (usually arms/legs/fingers) and other objects, like hanging jewelery and hair. Where I just draw a very small white line, I don't know how Alpha Cutter will handle such small areas.

This is exactly what I'm doing too. Deleting backgrounds from photos to get people out. I'm also 'very amateur' and without any fancy photoshop usage, I just use Paint & Paint.Net to do the job. Paint to delete the original background between/around the person from the original photo (save as PNG or work is for nothing!) and Paint.Net for anything Transparent/Layer related. Most photos indeed have a complex multicolored background, so it's hard to select one color and remove everything behind/around the person that is close to that 1 color. I've found for me the easiest way is to manually draw around the person in Paint, using pencil combined with line tool. This for me is the only way to exactly remove the background pixels I want. When a static colored area has been created around the person, just use the custom select tool to remove the remaining background. After that, it's on to Paint.Net to delete the static background and make the edges smooth. Do note: Like in your image, due to lighting, the person gets white glow on the body, which will result in deletion of those parts as well. What I do: - If you only need to delete the background (no gaps between arms etc) then you can draw a line very close to white to close that gap, so there'll be no bite out of the arm. But you have 1 gap between an arm and some between fingers, so you'll have to set the Magic Wands' Floodmode to Global and Tolerance to 0%. This will also select/delete the glow on the body To prevent this, you could do 2 things: * Recolor the exact white parts in the glow with a color very close to white, so you don't see a difference, or: * Just use another paint color when removing the background. If you see white glow on body parts close to the border, then I'd recommend to use a darker color to delete the background. Here I want to point out the plugin people recommended to me, after recently asking for a specific edge-smoothing option. Feather and AA's Assistant work quite nice for pixels close to eachother, but if you get longer horizontal/vertical lines, you'll still see the edges. The best way to see the difference is just visiting my thread and look for the image examples, see what fits you best. Good luck with your editing, if there are better tips to even select all multicolors and get the object out like you'd paint it manually, I'll be VERY interested for the how-to's.

As far as I can see, this isn't particalarly related to PDN, as it's just about resizing the image files. In the past I've worked on gif files, which I've created by generating images from a part of a movie, but all those images had to be cropped/resized in the same way. As the first comment on the link MJW posted notes, I've used ImageMagick for that. It can do an enormous amount of options you can't even think about. Just have to get used to the way you have to execute the commands+parameters you need, and experiment a bit on a folder to get the right results. In case no other program listed there already fits your needs (I don't try them lol, that's up to you).

Luckily the archive worked, I figured I had to compile it myself otherwise. I must say, I'm very impressed by the effect of the plugin. It does exactly what I want. Exactly the way I want it? Well, see for yourself, what looks better? > Feather vs Basic Antialias (which I can combine with Feather afterwards if needed): Thanks, I can surely live with this result!

Isn't this a way to 'extract' an object from an image within a circle or any form with faded border? I don't see how this applies to the situation when you already have an object on a transparent background (same layer, deleted image background) and want to fade/feather the object outline. Feather works for the biggest part like shown before, just with those horizontal/vertical lines it's ugly. Any more ideas?

I want to, but is the downloadlink still valid? Where can I get it? Still not really what I'm looking for. It keeps a wavy form, while I want to have it like I demonstrated on top ("Desired Result"). It should somewhat fade over a length of pixels till the end of the 'line', instead of making transparent pixels around it, which keeps the same form eventually.

Hello, I've been googling around a lot, but couldn't find a way to do what I want. I work with objects on a transparent background and want to use a feather tool to make the edges soft. This works fine with pixels close to eachother, but when there are longer lines (closer to horizontal/vertical) this doesn't seem to do the job right. It doesn't hide the edges, it just stretches and fades them, resulting in a final image where you could still see the way the edges were before (see demo on right side). I tried some plugins regarding feather, AA etc, but none worked like I wanted. Is there a tool/plugin that specifically does what I want, or a trick to accomplish it? See the image below as a demonstration for the issue.