Ketenks

It is what it is

This level of customization is 2 levels beyond what is available in Paint.net. If they do not even have custom shortcuts for the tools menu then this would certainly not be implemented before that. Look at my post I recently made about it: Hotkey Your Life There are plenty of features which could be added as of yet but as you can see, no one even replied to my post, so I'm not sure there is the infrastructure available to implement or even consider too many new features at one time. It's a great program, but it seems it will only improve at a snail's pace. So it's not to say that something like this might not be important but relative to the rate of development it's not anywhere near the vicinity.

First its a JPG. Please take your lovely image and save it as a PNG and work from it from there. The JPG is the format of choice for deployment since it is smaller but you only deploy as JPG; which means that you post the final picture you want as JPG onto your website but you work with your image as PNG before that time. The reason for this is that JPG loses quality every time you save it and upload it and change it but PNG does not lose quality over time. So just save the original JPG image as PNG in Paint.net, then use this image to work with. Add a layer over the image and under the image Make the bottom layer a white background Put your text onto the top layer Transparency will not solve the readability of your text if you want the image quality or look to stay the same. If you make the image transparent then the background color will show up by that amount it is transparent. So it will never truly be transparent if your website has a background color which is dark. That is why you need to just make the background white. This will however make the picture simply more white. If that's not what you want then you need to edit the TEXT in the top layer in order to make it more visible. Fully Opaque Image 50% Transparent White Background 50% Transparent Black Background These images were created doing this very thing. So if you want your image to look as bright and colorful as the original then you will need to make the text more visible on the text side of things.

Please please, pretty please can you put in the settings to change hotkeys for every single Tool or Plugin possible? I have a 17 button mouse that I love to use also for writing and for every program I use to quickly use it from those buttons. Paint.net would be on that next level if I could hotkey everything to what I want. For whatever reason, the onboard hotkeys don't even separate the different styles of selection or the move pixel tools. I would have all of these on their own button either on my keyboard or on my mouse to make things just fly. Thanks for considering it...and implementing it! (Also the option of setting any plugins to hotkeys as well. That would make it great.)

If you want a little more texture to the gradient as well you can try NoiseChoice. I recommend trying the transparent option and/or putting the noise on a separate layer from the gradient to see if you can stack it in different ways. But from what I can tell, your effect is a combination of a dithering like Iron67 said and it being graded out at the same time. But maybe this will complete the look. Maybe even doing it backwards somehow, using the gradient itself to make the noise transparently graded. Here is an attempt of mine to replicate the effect: I used Gradients Galore (EDIT: Default Gradient with Colour 1 Opacity: 205 and Colour 2 Opacity: 155) and then NoiseChoice. Creating 3 layers: White background, gradient and then noise on top. The noise for this particular look was set at: Spacing 255 Color of Blend: primary to secondary Blend: 0.5 noise on object only: unchecked box I then copied the top noise layer and then selected the gradient layer and used another plugin: Paste Alpha which is a part of Boltbait's Plugin Pack. There are others like it but this has a zoom slider which I used and set at: Alpha Source: clipboard shades of gray *reset the center as you need Zoom: 10 EDIT: Then I unchecked the noise layer and copied the textured gradient layer with the white background underneath. There are many ways to go about it but that is one of them. Hope this gets your own custom gradient look you like.

I second and third this motion. I still can't understand how you are using the channels to do what you're doing. Layering is great. Also, ERR I snagged that Gossamer and actually just the whole plugin pack, because I'm going to be doing this very thing on a card game I've been working on! So thanks.

That is exactly what TR's Alpha Cutter does. Check it out, install it by copying it into the Effects folder and then Right clicking it > Properties > Unblock > Apply > OK > Restart PDN and you should find it in Effects > Object in Paint.net. Make sure to watch the video tutorial on that page as it will explain everything in little time.

Now that's hands on. I snagged it. I definitely will go through the tutorial for that one.

I was thinking the same thing. I have no idea how snapping to anything would make selection easier to "cut around things." Hey you should just change the tolerance on the Magic Wand. It really is a magic wand for selecting things. Also you could use these plugins I found recently on making things go to Alpha that have been very helpful: Switch Gray to Alpha Color to Alpha With these plugins and then the Magic Wand you can select the image easily by only selecting Alpha until the image is left, then hit Ctrl+I to invert the selection. Super awesome! Paint.net and don't forget layering, I just learned that if you hit Ctrl+Shift+V to paste an object it will NOT paste the alpha on to that layer, so you will have "cut" all the alpha out in one (or three) keystroke.

Alright I've got one now. What about setting a mode to the color picker that allows it to go outside the program and pick anything on the screen? So you could effectively use Paint.net as a complete screen color picker. Now that would be awesome. I could use it right now, with an outside color picker to pick the color from the outside color picker right into the project and just keep going.

That makes sense.

Hey I know the post is a little old but I wanted to bring it back for another vote for the feature. You could have this as a global setting where all popup windows popup in a specific spot. Why not? Editing something a thousand times to learn what everything is doing could be a lot better having them all pop up in the same place. I have the same frustration with it. I end up using 10 different effects and undoing each of them before I find what I was looking for and then I do them all over again for the next effect. It's definitely tedious moving them all to the corner every time. And if you have to do something every time well, that's what a computer is for!

Sounds cool. I'm not sure how that works but I'm guessing those are the different ways of treating the Alpha channel. Would this be the reason why some blend modes have different blends if you swap the layers?

Egad! It's a common feature! Thanks I needed this a thousand times already.

Everyone has done it. They copy a picture selected in entirely Alpha based background and then go to paste it into another project or layer only to be miffed by the fact that the Alpha channel was also copied and that erases everything under it. What you really wanted was just the graphics that were there to be pasted...well sometimes...but not all the time. Therefore, I propose the Beta Channel as being the most ultimate transparency where it can never be selected by any means or copied but it can only be overwritten. This would allow one to save a file with a Beta background where you could easily hit Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C and then Ctrl+V and only paste the pixels that actually have anything in them. What do you think about this extra channel idea? A toggle could be set where one could switch from Alpha to Beta at will and many more switcher features/plugins down the road.

Well disregard this post! I read the forum and then followed the links to the Print It plugin and then saw that I had not copied the files correctly. All is well now. Scanning skills hiccup

How does one get rid of these error messages? Particularly these error messages: Why do they say "*.dlc"? I can't find these files.

Oh wow that must be interesting. I'd love to see what the chromagraph might be (possibly a made up word, chromatogram?). Though it might not actually correlate since what colors you see might have more to reflect on the nature of cognition itself than the natural harmonies which exist between light and sound. But it would be very interesting, to say the least since they must be connected in some way. The project is slow going and in its beginning stages. I haven't yet taken it beyond theory and into actually hearing it but these are small steps to seeing it more and more. I'm not sure what I would do with it but I've begun thinking about mapping different scores of music to color and just looking at it. The ability to mix colors as light lets me do chords which is a must for seeing any real music. Though I've yet to grasp how they actually should be represented. It may take some time, but I'd love to post a developing topic on this as it progresses. Thanks for your interest!

And lastly to answer MJW, the identity of these colors is...a musical chord! I've been working on a project that takes the light harmony of sound and so I wanted to start looking into what chords would look like in the rainbow spectrum. This particular chord is from a different tuning than standard tuning (since that is the purpose of the project: to find different tunings) and it represents the notes: B, D and F. The cross sections are the most important since they are what represent the chord's signature if you will. And I'm using the spread for my own analysis and fun. So thanks all. I can start throwing musical light around.

Ha! Thanks. That little guy up there. I couldn't find it. But yeah, I can see where you're coming from but I am expressly frustrated with constantly editing layers that I don't intend to edit. I've mysteriously lost graphics that I've now started versioning. I might just be a "paint.net lefty" if you will but it really messes with my mind. As a new user that can be important information.

EDIT: Sorry, the solution wasn't working right so I posted it here, then I fixed it and moved it back up there.

Thanks guys. And now that you've all shown me how to do it, here is my solution: Thanks for the learn up. This is could be way better too but now I can do what I need for sure.

How is the layer additive? EDIT: I'm an idiot. It's just a layer property...I was running around trying to find a layer property...Haha. The very thing I was needing and talking about. I knew I had to be missing something.

Yes, that is the additive way of blending: as light. However, how are you doing it? All that I have, to do blends, is Blendmodes Plus and I can only blend 2 things at one time. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I can't blend all the colors as additive as though each layer were additive at one time, the same way you might have each layer transparent at one time.

This is how I'm thinking of what blending should be: a blend mode that you set on a fader for a layer just like transparency. The layer won't look any different until things come over it or under it, then it blends with that to the measure you put the fader, just like transparency, but it blends it according to the fashion of the blend mode. In this way you could blend 50 layers at once in 50 different modes and not have to do them individually, copying them each or having them each in a file, as I am having to do now. Am I missing something or does that not sound way better as a way to blend?