IHaveNoName

There have been several threads posted about this sort of matter recenty including one I started myself:- https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/113810-text-and-text-window-installed-fonts-missing-from-menu/?do=findComment&comment=554883 There are system fonts which the main PDN text tool does not offer but some plugins actually do and vice versa. The technical explanation by Rick Brewster in that thread is that PDN uses DirectWrite and many plugins use GDI. Each has different typographic support criteria. Someone here correct me if I'm wrong but DirectWrite is supposed to support GDI but I noted in that MS doc there is some sort of issue involving installing fonts from "untrusted sources". The OS (Operating System) requires "elevated privileges to assure all installed fonts are trusted". I think what that means in effect is that PDN and some of its plugins have different 'white' lists for fonts. The other thing Rick Brewster mentioned ie. that DirectWrite does not support Bitmap fonts (like Terminal) so if you add that into the equation then the difference in the font support between the OS, PDN and some of its plugins has an explanation even if rather technical. The practical consequence for users is that there is nothing you can do except accept these font support anomalies. EDIT Pixey's suggestion may well work with fonts that are marked as hidden but that is definitely not the case with Small Fonts, System and Terminal. None of those are hidden fonts, I have them on my PC and the only option available is actually to Hide them. Confirmed if you click on Properties for each font too. The unsupported Bitmap font explanation is most likely what the problem is with Small Fonts and System too.

Particularly with simple, monochromatic shapes, as in Pixey's example, on a different coloured plain or transparent background instead of using Invert Selection you could use the Magic Wand tool to select the area outside the part of the image you do not want to flood. Another suggestion to avoid such problems flooding the whole image is to use another layer below the main image just for the background. Working on the image content in a transparent background layer on top of that gives you more options too ie. you can try different colour backgrounds/borders/frames etc without the annoyance of accidentally flooding the rest of the image.

Ctrl + Mouse Wheel, useful tip. Thanks for reminding us about that.

My simple solution would just to try deleting, specifically, Oswald-Light from your Font folder. If it is not there it can't be used so, in theory, you should get the regular version being used as default. EDIT: I've just done that myself and it works. As I described below the problem is the font name: all three family font members are named "Oswald" and presumably the first alphabetically is what is used by default. Just go to Control Panel > Appearance and Pesonalization > Fonts (or whatever path your Windows OS uses to display the stored fonts). Find the Oswald font set click on it and delete "Oswald-Light". After that if you use PDN you should find it uses Oswald-Regular. Although Oswald-Bold precedes it alphabetically I'm guessing it is the convention not to display a bold font when a regular one is available as emboldening and/or italicizing a regular font are usually options provided by the text writing tool being used. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/113810-text-and-text-window-installed-fonts-missing-from-menu/?do=findComment&comment=554878 I open that thread about a similar sort of matter a few weeks ago. The bottom line apparently is that if PDN or a plugin does 'like', for whatever technical reason, a particular font/font set there is nothing you can do about it. The problem may even be with the original font naming; many 'free' alternative font family sets name the font ie. its actual embedded name the same. It is surprisingly difficult to rename a font, especially if it is not a .ttf, and even if that has been done there is no guarantee that PDN or a particular PDN text plugin would list separately every font in that family no matter however they were renamed.

I'm not a copyright lawyer but I have had a little experience with copyright issues in relation to my own photography, selling digital and full rights use etc. Not to get too pedantic about this it should be pretty obvious you can not use any part of copyrighted material, in this case a logo, for commercial purposes without permission. The definition of what constitutes commercial purposes is open to legal interpretation and that also does vary internationally. To get even more pedantic just posting a poor quality copy here in a forum could be seen as a breach of copyright under many countries' IP (intellectual property) rights laws. I would suspect there are plenty of other unintended copyright breaches here and on every forum/web site that allows posting of attachments/avatars and other images. Most of the time the owners are not going to mind 'fair use' in such circumstances if it is not done for obvious commercial gain. It is effectively free advertising but legally they could object if they were so minded.

You probably need at least three layers to do this well. Black outlining was clearly used and, although the original image is very small, as welshblue demonstrates it does look like drop shadows was used too. But my guess would be that another text layer beneath the yellow one may have been used as well, converted to pure black that can be shifted down a few pixels to give an effect/bolster the offset drop shadows and outlining. The thicker white background outlining must have been done in a separate lower layer too and it looks to me as if that was feathered but also then copied into another layer below. Either white drop shadows with wider blur or some other type of blurring or wider feathering was likely used on that.

Are we talking about actual prints rather than digital files? If they are prints then:- Exactly what size are they because "picture card" (postcard?) size can mean anything from 5"x3.5" to 8.5"x6.5" (whole-plate). Officially recognised postcard size is roughly 6"x4"? As prints the original size and their actual photographic quality ie. original camera format/resolution/definition/film stock grain will limit the enlargement that is possible. A4 is roughly a x8 enlargement of a 35mm negative which was considered the maximum size an image viewed at typical reading distance could take. Good for single page use in newspapers and magazines but highly dependent on viewing distance if enlarged beyond that. So it depends very much on the final use intended as to how much a photograph can be enlarged without the picture quality deteriorating to the point it is not usable. For use on screen, assuming you have a scanner of some sort, scan the print in the usual way and simply see what it looks like when enlarged to the size you want. It is far quicker to do a test like that to see if the result is going to be acceptable.The scanner may even have built in enhancements to ensure picture quality is kept as high as possible. But it can't enhance detail that is not there in the original. Remember too I'm talking about a print taken from an original negative and yet it sounds like you want to enlarge a "picture card" size print ie. copy a smaller print and enlarge it up to A4. That means further unavoidable reduction in picture quality. If you have the original negatives then those are always what you should always use. Colour or b/w? What paper surface are they printed on? Glossy, preferably unglazed is the ideal. Smooth matt finish is OK but anything with texture ie. Silk, Satin or Stipple finish, which were commonly used by mass market photographic printers for decades, is going to reduce the picture quality possible even further. More information, and maybe other things I've haven't even considered, will be required for better tailored advice.

So a user just can not use certain font types with those text plugins, just about understood . It was actually the Warownia font I was most interested in using, an open source font family very similar to Helvetica and, for the purpose intended, a pretty much perfect alternative. I've since found other Text Formation plugins that have specific font support issues including xod's Circular Text and toe_head2001's own Text Window. Circle Text, Rotate Text, Rotate TextSUI and Spiral Text however are OK with more fonts or at least one of the fonts I could use for the project that prompted this thread. However I've also discovered that even the latter plugins mentioned do not support some fonts which PDN's Text options do support like Walrus Bold from my previous screenshot examples. None at all support fonts like OPTIRussian-Gothic (another Helvetica alike), and others with the OPTI prefix. From the information provided here (thanks) there is obviously more than just one reason a particular font may not be supported by a particular plugin or indeed by PDN itself. In short there is nothing that can be done about it. Knowing that is actually helpful because it means that if you are creating an image that requires a particular font or particular text effect you have to make alternative provision for the font's incompatibility with those plugins in the design.

You live and learn. Thanks for that. I've only been using PDN for 8+ years and had no idea you could do that. 😳 Any ideas about the other matter: why the PDN Text font list and those plugins mentioned do not displaying the full installed system Fonts collection and differ from one another too?

I've often been mildly annoyed at PDN Text font size options gap between 48pt and 72pt and usually just resize the font layer when I need an intermediate size . But I thought there must be a plugin to make it simpler and found both the Text+ and Text Window plugins offer very much what I was looking for and more. However I found that the font I was using in the main PDN Text font list was not being offered in either plugin. When I compared the fonts listed by the plugins and the PDN main font list I noticed other missing fonts both those listed by the plugins and PDN itself. I include a screenshot showing one small section of the PDN fonts list on the left and the equivalent Text Window plugin on the right. There are plenty of other cases these are just examples. The missing fonts on each side are underlined in red. Walrus Bold and Warownia in the main list are missing from both the plugins' font list whilst Vrinda, which the plugins both display, is missing from the main PDN list. Initially I thought it was a TTF /OTF thing but it isn't there are both types displayed/missing in both menu lists. Access permissions don't appear to be the cause of the problem either. Vrinda is a default hidden font, presumably because it is used by the OS system or some other 'important' program. But there are examples of similarly hidden fonts appearing in both lists and others which only display in one list but not the other like Vrinda but in the PDN font list rather than the plugins. In short: I can see no common factor in any case except that both the plugins appear to display identically to each other. Any explanation as to why this is happening and any solution appreciated.

Thanks for the info. There was a strange coincidence yesterday. https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/113789-paintnet-crashes-on-start-up/?tab=comments#comment-554679 Pixey suggested using the repair option. Is the error message shown there the prompt to repair null54 described?

I've meant to ask about this before: I'm inquisitive and going through the files in the PDN installation I've noticed there are three different files named in relation to PDN Repair: an .exe, a .config and a .pdb. In Windows Control Panel > Programs > Paint.net there is no manual repair option available unlike some other programs, just uninstall. The .config file suggests that the PDNRepair.exe is or may be running every time on start up. Is that correct? Just curious to know when and under what circumstances it runs because neither Process Hacker 2 or AutoRuns show anything other than the main PDN.exe running when you boot the program.

I doubt it is this but MS .NET Framework was updated earlier this week as part of the regular monthly, in this case February 2019, "Patch Tuesday" updates. So I'd check if that was auto-updated on your system yesterday. I did a search for any reported problems before I updated and have done another quick one just now but found no post about anything so far. What I can confirm is that the most recent PDN works fine on a Win7 64bit PC with that new update but, of course, it may be a different matter for other Windows versions.

I'll add my appreciation too. I assume they all have to be done from a blank canvas but whatever the case I'd no idea you could do complex looking graphics quite as impressive as all of those just using PDN.

https://www.pvladov.com/2013/10/increase-intel-hd-graphics-dedicated-video-memory.html?m=1

That solution would be ideal but I suppose if nobody else is interested then there would not be much incentive to do it.

Is there any way to get PDN to change the default New image Primary and Secondary Background colours (Black/White) to something else permanently? I ask because I'd actually prefer it to start with a totally transparent background on launch. Of course it is easy enough to add a new layer which, by default, is transparent and delete the Background layer but as I am having to do this fairly frequently I was wondering why you can not change those defaults in the settings? Perhaps there is some good reason I hadn't considered but wouldn't it be a useful feature?

And remember if you start a New image the background will, by default, be the secondary colour ie. opaque white. That means if you use the centerline.dll at that point the alignment lines will actually have an opaque white background and so won't be much use that way. As ReMake recommends always use the alignment tools in a new layer where the default background is 100% transparent, ideally place it as the top layer of your stack. Then you know where that layer is and can easily find, disable or delete it before saving or flattening.

I didn't even remember the tools I had that can do this and more. This thread has bought it to my attention so now I might remember to use them. Thanks for that. Most of the time I've drawn composition allignment aids manually in a separate top layer and or using one of the other grid plugins often in different layers, adjusting the vertical/horizontal spacing as required. But the plugin I already actually have, actually designed for the purpose, and will try to remember to use from now on for such basic allignement tasks is the one mentioned by welshblue: CompoGrids.dll which came as part of Red Ochre's plugin in pack. It also helps in remembering where it is by being installed in the Effects > Composition sub-menu, arguably the most obvious place for such tools. That it is installed in Effects > Render is the only criticism I'd aim at the xod's Guidelines.dll, mentioned by others here too. It is an even more sophisticated alignment tool, particularly as it allows you to move X and Y positioning separately off centre if required. But there are good reasons for having both those mentioned or just Remake's centerlines.dll if all that is wanted is the simplest solution.

A long, long time ago once or twice I actually used a professional level 35mm slide copying set up ie. for film to film copies which included a very low level pre-fogging flash to reduce the contrast that the copying process would inevitably cause. I think it may even have had built in colour correction filters like a colour enlarger which BTW could also be adapted for copying purposes too. It was so long ago I can't even remember the name of that copy system but it was widely used by professional studios/darkrooms and amateurs with money at the time. Us aspiring photographers on a budget had to make use of just those ^ sorts of cheaper alternatives. I had a BPM manual bellows + 50mm enlarger lens and and purpose designed 35mm slide holder. There were also problems using 'clear' frosted acrylic sheet for diffusing the lighting as such plastics always introduced colour casts which had to be corrected with CC filters for true colour accuracy. Working out what the colour cast was and how much correction was needed was a skill in itself. Digital photography with white balance and easy colour correction before and after the image (file) creation have consigned those sorts of problems thankfully, mostly, to history.

I'd too suggest trying that Color Balance +v1.1 plugin which allows you to make very large corrections to Magenta/Cyan/Yellow rendering selectively for highlights, mid-tones and shadows. But getting that skin tone anywhere near correct even for the warmth of the apparent afternoon sunshine and keeping the (white?) T-Shirt neutral will be a seriously difficult task. Beyond me, I've just tried using that plugin and the setting HyRez suggested and my own practical knowledge of photographic colour printing and I couldn't find any settings that produced an acceptable skin tone, kept the T-Shirt white and indeed create any general semblance of a natural looking result.. I can't believe the original Kodachrome slide actually looks like that; dye stability and colour accuracy were its big selling points. Unless the slide has been left in the sun for a long time and is genuinely that orange I'd go back and rescan it and adjust the color balance or use whatever color controls the scanner supports. As it is I'd guess that there has been some digital enhancement to bring out facial detail. Looking at the backlit hair it suggests the face of the subject was likely in significant shadow with only the white T-Shirt, clouds and whatever other nearby reflective surfaces there were providing the fill-in. There's certainly no indication in the eyes of any fill-in flash. Quality dedicated photo-scanners like those made by Epsom include all sorts of colour and image enhancement/restoration options which I'd try before attempting to fix such problems on a poor quality image file scan using PDN.

An old photographic printing method of doing this sort of this might still have relevance here. I've used it myself for replacing the backgrounds around relatively simple shaped foreground objects but it does work. The technique is to make a high contrast mask of the foreground ie. change the image to b/w and then adjust the brightness/contrast to get just pure black and white. There are several ways of using this mask but in this case, with a plain white background wanted, you simply use the Magic Wand tool to cut out the black part of the mask and merge the white remainder with the original image. The Magic Wand cuts the outline far more accurately when using a high contrast mask. The problem is that the tonal make up of the original picture may not lend itself to this technique. You can lose fine detail at the edges very easily and you often need to do quite a bit of work retouching the mask itself. You had just the same problem when this technique was used in photographic printing most typically adding new skies for landscapes but for isolating a regular shaped object on a plain background for pack shots etc it was effective. The advantage you have now with digital graphics is that, unlike film, alignment of the mask is not an issue and you can get pretty much a pixel perfect result with suitable subject matter.

Just the white 'twisted' band or do you need the 'scan' line look and varying red background too? I just had a rough go at it and this is what I came up with. Unfortunately the original picture is not good enough to see exactly what is going on, whether the lines on the twisted band are actually transparent and whether the folded part is outlined in some way etc. It was more complicated than I thought but to start with you need a two tone graduated background. I used the darkest and lightest red from the original provided. For the lines (if required) use the Render > Gridlines plugin with horizontal spacing set to 0. Put the latter in another layer to the graduated background so you can keep it on top of everything. I'd hide it whilst doing the rest of the image but it can help with the positioning of the various elements at certain points too. You could build it from, I think, five separate white quadrilateral shapes, duplicating the four that are repeated but that seemed more complicated than the way I approached this. That is to think of it as two main quadrilateral shapes: a white rectangle and a white parallelogram. In another layer and, obviously you have to work out the exact scale/size for them, a solid white rectangle was drawn and then, in a layer on top, the two parallel lines of appropriate positioning and thickness added. I used the Shapes > Rectangle > Outline option for that and the lines made the colour of the darkest part of the graduated background. Reason for that is when you colour cut the lines later any inaccuracy in the edge will disappear into the background. Once done merged the two down then duplicate that so you have two rectangles with parallel lines on separate layers. Position overlapping, as in the original, with the bottom coloured line of one and the top line of the other joining up to run across the exact centre of the canvas. Keep them in separate layers. The next bit was the real pig. I tried using the Parallelogram from Shapes first and then the Distort > Oblique plugin on another copy of the rectangle layer and both cause problems. The latter in particular distorted the coloured lines making them thinner. The solution I used was simple but crude: use the rectangle outline option again to create a pair of parallel coloured lines the correct distance apart and then rotated them to line up at the correct angle with the coloured lines of the white rectangles in the layers below. Once done I copied the layer to get another pair of lines for the other side of the parallelogram. Vertical coloured lines were added for the right and left edges too. So you now have an outline parallelogram you can either fill in with white or put on a white background layer and cut to shape. Now using the Color > Cut Color (XMario) plugin cut out all the coloured lines in the three shape layers you now have ie. two rectangles and a parrallelogram. Then merge normally. Un-hide the gridlines and that should be it. Hope some of this is useful.

That linked article simply recommends using the Default Program Editor both spamme and I described using in earlier posts. The article is from 2016 and describes it as a 'new' way to change the default programs but the Default Programs Editor portable program (app) has been available since 2009 long before Win10 even existed. However the info there is still good and well presented. The question still not satisfactorily resolved is what is occasionally changing spamme's "Edit" option association? I've not had this myself and like HyReZ I am not bothered about opening a picture in Windows Picture Viewer and then clicking on the context menu options to Open With PDN or one of the other listed graphic programs I have. I prefer doing it that TBH but I can understand those wanting to use the "Edit" option on the image file to open it in the editor direct.

Strange because I've never really thought about this, I too prefer to open image files using the Windows 7 built in Photo Viewer despite the fact that MS decided to remove animated GIF support from it. WinXP Windows Photo Viewer does support GIF animations so what MS were thinking removing it who knows? My research turned up this old thread here:- https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/20390-default-editor/ which has a solution approved by RIck B via a re-install or update of PDN and check (ticked by default) the install option to use PDN as default editor for JPG, PNG, BMP and TGA. Short of editing the registry there doesn't appear to be any other way of doing the same thing via Windows, PDN or even third party default program editors. Most of the latter I've tried concentrate on changing default "Open" programs for specific file extension types but not "Edit". However that one above ^ does work. It is a useful little program I've used many times Default Programs Editor (Google and it is easily found). As you can see it has a specific option for changing context menu associations but you do have to go through every image file type to set or re-set the default "Edit" menu option. The question spamme is asking is surely not how to do it but why the settings revert to default occasionally? Is it Windows updates messing up the defaults or PDN. My money is on Windows because the default PDN install has the use as editor for JPG, PNG, BMP and TGA options ticked.