IHaveNoName

That's the problem with uninstalling the main program, if a leftover is what is causing this error. BTW that has not been proven yet, it was just a suggestion as to the cause of the problem. It is the same even with an uninstaller like Revo, once the main program installation has gone it has nothing to 'latch' onto and search for those leftovers related to that particular program. BCUninstaller does/did have the ability to look for orphaned files and I think a couple of other uninstallers like IOBitUninstaller likewise. I'm wary of recommending IOBit products though as whilst their uninstaller is a very good tool I've tried some of their other 'free' software which came with difficult to opt out of 'extras' and put an auto-run/auto-update in start up. Things I hate. If no restore point is available then you could try CCleaner's registry cleaner but always put in a restore point before doing that and backup the registry files to be deleted when prompted. If there's nothing PDN related in the registry then it won't help of course. I'd next suggest trying to launch an earlier PDN installer. I would not go through with it if it does work but if an older version installer can be used it might be a clue to what the problem is with using the new one. If you later did want to install the older version you could also possibly use it with that tool Pixey found or one of the deep uninstallers I suggested and it could pick up the old leftovers too.

Pleased I identified the font correctly and that it all fits perfectly with the age of the radio set too. I actually know a bit about Eric Gill without having to Google :) but I didn't actually think of him in relation to the Gill Sans font which is pretty dim of me so thanks for that extra info. It is also a strange coincidence that I've been using the open source Railway Sans font, based on Johnston's original London Underground design, very recently.

Yep, concur. I have also been extra helpful and pretty sure I've found the font used too: it appears to be Gill Sans - Condensed Bold. The only thing that does not match is "MOTALA" which appears to be more condensed in the original but is certainly not the Gill Sans - Extra Condensed Bold version you can also find. Custom 'squishing' of fonts for use on dials/switches etc is not unusual. Easier to identify than I thought it would be.

I think the problem will be that because the radio dial 'grain' is so obvious any background colour removal will also remove parts of the lettering. particularly the faded parts, as well. That "1400" is a prime example. I've just had a go at this myself with XMario's 'Cut Colour' plugin to turn the background transparent similar to HyReZ's suggestion but, as expected, it took out most of the "1400" too. I tried layering and various blending options but there is simply not enough of the "1400" or some of the others areas left to build up. Same problem when creating or using any b/w masking/recolouring technique. Increasing the colour saturation does not help with the "1400" or other areas lost using any colour removal tool. Maybe others here will have more ideas which might help with that. As this is a relative simple image and assuming it is just this small area my solution would be a crude but ultimately better one and that is to recreate the image from scratch. The only real difficulty would be in identifying the font, that mainly due to the original dial quality. You can't create good enough images of the letters for use on any of the font identification websites I know.

I do not understand what that link provided indicates about the cause of the problem. The subject matter seems to be about a corrupt exported registry backup. If that is confusing me I'm sure it will confuse others here finding this thread having a similar problem in the future. So perhaps a little clearer information about what was done to fix it would be useful. Are you just saying you just updated Windows10 with the latest monthly MS updates and that fixed it?

I think the problem is going to remain despite the use of BoltBait's Transparency plugin. I tried it on the 256x256 symbol WillT posted earlier. It indeed does what is shown by toe_head2001's but that is on the 256x256 image. The moment you reduce that transparency adjusted image down to 32x32 the transparent pixels return and that is surely going to cause the magenta outline to reappear. 1400% magnification If you apply the Transparency plugin to either that or use it on the original image after reduction to 32x32 the result is the same: an expanded icon size:- 1400% magnification That actually looks cruder, even when reduced to normal use size, than my earlier suggestion to build the icon from individual pixels at 32x32. One thing I was thinking is how the Garmin device reacts to .ICO images (Windows icon file format). As I understand it these are effectively 24bit BMP images. Before the .ICO specific save format was available in a lot of graphics programs, like PDN, the recommended method of creating images for icon use was to make a 32x32 icon, add an .ico extension to the file name then save as a 24bit BMP using the Windows Paint tool. It would then save as an .ICO file. It might be worth experimenting with PDN's icon (.ico) save format instead of BMP as that appears to save a transparent background. I suspect it won't work but the magenta background outline is the problem now and I can see no way of addressing that if intermediate colour pixels are present. Trying to get the Garmin to display the original all transparent background instead is worth a shot.

That's what I just suggested too.

I've no idea what Alpha Blending means or how you enable it in PDN either. However I think that I can explain what the problem is with the magenta outline of the icon. Anyway the problem is 'simply' that the edges of the black icon are neither magenta (FF00FF) or black (000000). They're made up of partially transparent pixels which apparently means the software concerned doesn't see them as pure magenta and convert them to full transparency as wanted. It sees them as colour, a shade of magenta and displays it accordingly. You can see this if you open the 32x32 image in PDN and just use the magnify option. As you magnify the tiny icon you'll see those nice sharp edges are actually raggedy and I think that is why you're getting the magenta coloured outline. If I've understood correctly the object of the advice being provided here is to find a way of blending down the black icon with the magenta background to reduce that raggedness so that you have just a pure black icon on a pure magenta background and no intermediate tones. That suggested a crude solution to me which may work if no other advice proves suitable: create the icon/symbol itself at 32x32 and build it from single, solid black pixels. You'd need to work at 1000%+ magnification but in theory it should give you the fully transparent background you want if the shapes used are simple with straight lines.

Some useful information in this thread. That 'Pleasantville' effect Extract Color plugin is something I've been looking for. Re: that "Advanced Desaturate" shown above - is that a separate plugin or part of a pack? I did a quick search of the plugins and nothing came up.

That's the very reason why I used the term "core" 1 pixel circle. We're not disagreeing on anything we're actually agreeing; you can't make a true 1 pixel circle look smooth without adding more pixels and that means it is not a true 1 pixel circle any more.

The AA tool I was actually thinking of the AA Assistant as use for Welshblue's second circle example. I only discovered that tool myself quite recently so didn't use it at that time. It gives you more control over the AA than the basic AA that, as you say, is used by default. What we're talking about here is creating a core 1 pixel circle with PDN as sharp but smooth looking as possible. The technique I described and also suggested by Welshblue makes it look better than it does if you just accept the default result, AA on or off. That it looks better is what is important. The AA Assistant tool appears to do the same thing but of course in a much more convenient way.

Welshblue's idea of duplicating the circle then merging it down sounds very similar to what I discovered worked for creating a 'perfect' circular aperture in an overlay. This was to be used in a game's console dashboard skin and behind the overlay would be displayed the various apps and games 256x256 square icons as clean circles. What I noticed is that any icon lighter than the edge of the surrounding circular aperture highlighted and exaggerated the jagged edges of the circle. I never tried an anti-aliasing tool at that time but what I did do probably resulted in a similar effect. I created a solid 1 unit circle the same size as the overlay aperture but in tone lighter than the edge of that. Then I slightly blurred it (I can't remember which blur type I used), duplicated it, rotating the new layer 45 degrees before merging it down. TBH I'm not sure how many layers I eventually used doing the same thing. But when it looked right ie. the circle edge still looked sharp I tried it out. The result was that the edge of the overlay aperture had the jagged parts filled with pixels of graduated transparency and looked far sharper and cleaner than it had before. It still took a lot of time altering the number layers used and blur distance to get the best result. Even when that was done if the icon behind the overlay is predominantly black at the edges you can just detect a faint lighter tone there if you're looking for it. Still it is proof that Welshblue's idea about duplicating circles and merging the layers does work and maybe would in this case too.

When you're using layers it is effectively all one image. You can choose not to display any layer by unticking it which makes it easier to work on/identify particular layers. Remember that at any point you can just use Undo. PDN saves everything you've done to an image after it has been opened. I don't know if there is some limit to that but if there is I've never hit it. When everything is as you want simply flatten the whole thing (again any unticked layers won't we included). If there is any problem simply use Undo. But if all is OK save in the image in format desired. What I do then for important images I've done a lot of work on is use Undo to separate the layers again and backup the image as a work in progress .pdn file too. This saves the layers at that point but just the layers, it doesn't save the work done before the save so you can't use Undo to reverse any changes you made prior to that. Having that .pdn file to go back to is why having the text on a separate, transparent layer is so useful as it allows you to edit or even completely replace the text. You can't change the font or any of the existing text formatting using the text tools of course. Part of what we were discussing earlier in this thread, about being able to save a text document and import it into PDN with a transparent background, is related to that. As you've found out Word does allow this which far from being a problem is actually useful. You could save that Word document alongside the .pdn image backup to give you full flexibility if you want to change the text layer. I hope that explains things.

Pity he didn't realise that ^. I guess hagank must have really just deleted the PDN folder rather than uninstalled it the proper way via Control Panel > Programs and Features > uninstall or whatever the equivalent is for the OS being used. IMHO all programs should be provided with a dedicated uninstaller particularly if that is what is necessary to clean everything that might interfere with a reinstall. Even if all the uninstaller does is run the Windows uninstall program tools it would still help stop problems like that described occurring. For me using Revo Uninstaller or one of the other similar thorough uninstallers, like BCUninstaller, is absolutely essential. When you realise just how much stuff can get left behind by using only the Widows uninstall tools you'll never be tempted just to delete the main folder to uninstall a program ever again. Also, once that main folder has gone, it makes finding, let alone removing those leftovers causing the problems considerably more difficult.

Pity. So it looks like you must either use Word > Word Art or just stick to the .RTF text format if you want to cut and paste into PDN. the latter without background transparency. The only other option I can think of if you want it to import text with a transparent background is to use the Color > Cut Color plugin > Remove color as the background option. But with just text, particularly smaller/complex fonts, I suspect it would do an unacceptably crude job.

Just did a search and apparently LibreOffice also has an equivalent to MS' Word Art:- Not tried it yet but I thought the information might be useful as not everyone has Word now.

Just to make that clear: the checkered pattern you're seeing is not a patterned background it just means the background in your text layer is totally transparent. If you put that layer above any other background layer, eg. a photograph, that background photograph will appear with the text on top of it. To replace the background colour with a plain white layer just create a new layer (by default a new layer is transparent too) and fill it with white or whatever colour you like and merge the text layer down with it. Addendum What's mildly interesting is that I haven't been able to reproduce the 'problem'. hanspeter: what MSWord text format type was being used? What I've found using a new PDN image with the default white background layer is whether the copied/cut text was added as a new layer, to the existing white background layer or opened in a completely new image, the white background remained. With Notepad (.TXT) you can not copy/cut and paste into PDN but when I tried it with both WinXP Wordpad and Win7 Wordpad (.RTF Rich Text Format) ), as said, both kept the white background whether I used Select All or just selected and cut/copied the text from the mouse context menu. I also tried using Libre (Writer) and apparently you can not copy/cut and paste its default .ODT text format into a PDN image or even when saved as a MSWord document (.DOCX, .XML tried). The only Libre Office text document format available I have tried which works to copy/cut paste direct into PDN is one saved in .RTF, just as for Wordpad. So whatever this particular problem was caused by would seem to be particular to the MSWord text format or settings being used unless there is some default PDN setting that could cause this and I do not think there is.

If the error message is the stuff under Exception Details I'm sure there will be others here, many of whom won't have the guts to admit it, who do not understand exactly what that means. I assume from the response it is some type of user error so it might help explaining the problem which provoked the error message a little more, in layman's terms if possible. A clearer explanation might also help avoiding having to deal with such questions again.

I just tried this as I've been interested in using multicolour gradients in the past. It actually installs now in the Effects main menu;_ I'd ask Atlas if he downloaded the plugin from the primary link at the start of the thread? There's another link later, on page two, which downloads something else. It certainly isn't a plugin and if that is what he installed then it is no wonder it isn't working. I could have sworn there was a problem with the Multi-Color Gradient plugin when I tried it some time ago (can't find the post). Whatever was wrong it does now seem to work OK as far as I have tested it. However those old problems lead me to read about a simple technique for creating multi-colour gradients without any plugin necessary. Just using the Pencil tool create a coloured block made up from one pixel of each colour you want to use. Have zoom view set at maximum unless you have very good eyesight. All you do then is Select just that coloured pixel block and massively resize it up eg. to 480x480 and, magically, you'll get a pretty good multi-coloured gradient effect.

That sounds like a very useful plugin. Up until now when I've wanted to do something like this ie. cut out a reasonably complex foreground element I've used the old photographic matte technique of creating a high contrast b/w template in another layer of the foreground elements I want to remove. That is not always easy and they often have to be retouched particularly to get the edge contours as accurate as possible but once you have that high contrast template you get a much more accurate cut out with Wizard tool. Then you can blend in the cut layer with the background. The Xor technique described by Ego Eram Reputo earlier is essentially the same idea but done in a more sophisticated and unarguably, if it accurately defines the bits you want to remove, better way. I've always wondered what Xor was and could be used for.

Isn't the real 'problem' just the flattening when you saving a multi-layered 'work in progress' image as .png/.jpg or whatever? You have to do that to save it unless you're saving as .pdn. What I do is simply employ the undo option afterwards just as described much earlier by Ego Eram Reputo and make the incremental change to the image I'm testing then save again. That is usually just a case of excluding one layer and enabling another. But it does become a little tedious when you have to do that multiple times as I often need to simply because of the types of jobs I'm using PDN for. If you could save as .jpg/.png and not have it flatten the image file you have open in PDN or 'unflatten' it automatically after saving it would certainly save some time. I also find it mildly annoying that each time I want to save in such circumstances .pdn is back as the default save format and I have to re-select .png/,jpg or whatever again. Of course you need the format option menu but remembering the last save format would be helpful. It is understandable why it is set up to work like that and I'll admit accidentally saving as a .pdn when I meant to save as a .png has actually been useful. But the option to choose another default save format at least during a particular session might be worth considering.

From MS docs So it is actually part of the OS if you're using Windows 8/8.1 or 10 so you must have it on your system if you're using one of those but looking back at your previous posts it appears you may be using Windows 7 with SP1. Windows 7 SP1 comes with .NET MS Framework v3.5.1 and it is part of the OS too but you do have to enable it manually from the Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features and click on the "Turn Windows features on or off" option in the side menu. It should show .NET MS Framework 3.5.1 in the list of Windows features. Admin rights are required. If the box next to it is clear then you have not enabled that feature, if it is showing a filled (blue) box it means that only the main option there is enabled. That is normal, you do not need to enable the other two options for .NET MS Framework to function. However do not anything at this point ie. do not enable or disable the feature - just look and see if the main component was enabled. It appears you've been trying to install various later versions of .NET MS Framework so who knows what consequences that might have had. Therefore I would urge you use System File Checker first as I described. Remember to create a restore point first. SFC might sort out the problem by resetting that part of the OS back to the immediate post install state from which you should be able to update .Net MS Framework as intended. But until you try you won't know.

Try my first go to solution for anything MS system related. First put in a restore point then:- Run chkdsk - easiest way is to go to My Computer or whatever your version of Windows calls it now and right click on your primary HDD > Properties > Tools > Check now. That will set up a boot time error check for any indexing errors and bad sectors on the HDD. Reboot the PC to start it. Once finished and rebooted then run System File Checker - use Run > CMD and type "sfc /scannow" (without the quotation marks of course). Press enter and it will start checking and fixing any system files errors it finds. If you are told there were errors then that is actually a good thing because they could be what was causing the PDN install problem. Now try updating your .NET MS Framework version using Windows Updates > Check for Updates from your Control Panel. This may or may not work but it won't do any harm trying it.

With an older version of PDN there are some old plugins you can still download which work which may not do so on the more recent ones because they haven't been updated. It may not be an issue at all depending on what you want PDN to be able to do. I have a WinXP SP3 installation with PDN v3.5.3 which is is either the last or penultimate version which worked without any problems on WinXP. It is still VERY usable despite not supporting some updated plugins. The old versions of PDN are still easily found, Google is your friend, at least in this case. " Paint.NET is intended to be a lightweight and simple improvement over Paint,........". Dammed with faint praise; it is much more than that.

Making sure you're using the right layer ie. highlighted is one of the things you have to discipline yourself to check. So many times I've used multiple layers for different elements in an image and at some point I've realised I accidentally added to or erased something from the wrong layer. That's happened to me when adding text and I've ended up with words or even parts of some words written to the wrong layer. You may have done so much after that unnoticed mistake that you don't want to undo it. But sometimes you can't even do that, particularly if you've saved and reopened the image. It just makes more work sorting out the problem.