IHaveNoName

It might depend on what Windows theme your PC is using but on my one when you launch the PDN version being used is shown top left next to the PDN icon. Alternatively, the method may depend on the Windows version: if you're launching from a shortcut or start menu icon: you should be able just to right click on that > choose Properties then click on Go To File Location button. Just hover the cursor over that EXE and the PDN version will be shown 4.311.xxxx.xxxx, meaning it is v4.3.11.

Another solution is not to save to C:\Pictures at all to avoid such unwanted MS 'security' issues. Create a Pictures folder on your secondary HDD or attached storage (HDD/SSD/flash drive) and save stuff to that instead. With USB 3.0 or better the read/write speed to the alternative internal or external storage device is only marginally slower at worst and can be faster with USB 3.2 particularly if your primary drive is a HDD.

That ^ would make more sense than what I thought the problem might be - the OP is trying to open the actual plugin .dll rather than just install it in the correct location. I'm thinking he assumed that whatever plugin he was trying to install came with an installer when it was just a plugin .dll you have to manually install. The PDN plugin install YT videos I was going to link too weren't very helpful, particularly if US English is not your primary language. But whilst perusing for alternative tutorials I came across BoltBait's written one with accompanying pics which includes a mention that .dll files may be locked when installed on some PCs. Never seen anything like that myself but maybe the OP is having this problem if it is not a more general plugin install misunderstanding.

What Windows OS are you using?

Check the full file extension. Is usually hidden unless you've altered the folder/file view settings but its not impossible that instead of saving it as .pdn you've saved it as .pdn.jpg or something like that when using the Save As option. Hope it is as simple as that.

I do this sort of thing regularly as I like to create custom icons 256x256 and, same size, cover art for things like music files. Often the 'CD' cover pics you find online are not square so all you need to do really is just add a background layer beneath it. That can be white, transparent or whatever colour suits. Then just change the canvas size to, in your case 1080x1080. The canvas resize tool allows you to tether the original image in nine different places on the canvas but for what you want the default centre option would seem to be all that's needed. If not just use the Align plugin (Centre Both option) afterwards on the original image layer.

I think the OP may have made the mistake of erasing stuff in the primary layer which, if you do it with no solid background in a lower layer, will leave a transparent hole in the image. I'm always making that mistake: not checking which layer I'm doing the erasing in.

If you're using a lot of layers are you saving your WIP (Work In Progress) as PDN or just PNG? I've found it is all too easy to forget you've stopped a particular layer displaying for whatever reason (typically before and after comparisons) and when you flatten the image you don't notice and save it in that state. I save WIP projects in both PDN and PNG or other preferred format for precisely this reason. Too often I've come back to the PNG and realised its missing something you know you did. You go back to the PDN file and realise the missing detail was indeed in a non-displaying layer. It happens.

Interesting; I think the OP may be trying to mimic the orthochromatic b/w film (invented around 1873) rather than the earlier "blue sensitive" type mentioned. Blue/ultra-violet sensitive only films were the norm before orthochromatic film was invented and very troublesome to use particularly for portraits and landscapes with blue skies. Even with the introduction of panchromatic film that was and still is slightly over-sensitive to blue light so records blue skies lighter than the human eye sees them. Hence the use of yellow > red filters. So what I was wondering is if you could do that in reverse ie. reduce the blue content of the colour photograph before converting it to b/w. We're working on a 'positive' here, the 'effect' is caused originally by an excess of blue on the negative which means the blue part of the spectrum prints lighter. With a 'positive' you have to add the complimentary colour: yellow to make the blue parts display lighter. I've just had a a quick go at that, basically just adding a lot of yellow and then converting it to b/w seemed to do a reasonable job. But it does affect contrast so you would have to increase that to get an authentic looking tonal range in the rest of the image.

I've said this before here that I would not be without BoltBait's plugin pack but as part of a basic plugin set for the noob PDN user I think that there are a lot of those plugins which are not going to be used. It is very easy to install everything and other plugin packs too without thinking carefully about if you actually need all of them. It will slow down your navigation of PDN's drop down menus if you have to scroll through fifty or more entries as you may find you have to do with the Effects > Render plugins. However in general I'd agree with fd2 on that - I'm petty sure the Kris Vandermotten's Object Align plugin does not come as a standard install tool but it is one I use a lot because the projects I tackle with PDN usually involve text and getting that properly positioned automatically is very helpful. A composition alignment grid plugin like Red ochre's Compo Grid as standard would make sense too. My thought is that a separate Favourites plugin menu you can add to/remove from would resolve the problems associated with plugin install over-indulgence.

You mean the Manual Color tool? I've had issues with that and just checked and it still seems to be the case that by default it appears to use Add rather than replacing the colour. I just tried it on black text recolouring to red RGB 255/0/0 and the result is very different from using the selected text colour red RGB 255/0/0 directly. Perhaps I've been using some incorrect setting with the Manual Recolour tool.

I rarely use the Magic Wand unless the text happen to be large and blocky. Anything 'fussy' like a fancy font and you know you're going to have to reset the tolerance very precisely just to get it to select the finer detail. Normally I go to the Color > Recolour Choice plugin which is set up to use Primary and Secondary colour choices by default.

TBH I'm not a big fan of recolouring text in any circumstances, particularly small, elaborate fonts with swirls/serifs. Even when adjusting the tolerance if you compare a black original text word recoloured to, for example, red against the same word typed in directly in red, the recoloured version is very obvious. The technique I suggested isn't any different really, depending on how you recolour. If the text is a strong colour rather than black I've found with text in particular you get slightly better results using hue or colour balance tools for the recolouring instead of the dedicated recolouring plugins. However the technique described was for changing dozens of words scattered about a block of text, the task I was doing. I just find it easier and quicker to recolour a whole layer of copied text and erase the larger areas of text I didn't want to change rather than having to go around selecting each word and recolouring them individually. However if it is just one or two words then, yes I agree selecting the words and recolouring them individually is the more sensible solution.

By chance I've been dealing with same problem myself only a few hours ago and it is a bit of a faff because, for example, you can't change the text colour to highlight a word when a particular bank of text still has the active text cursor. If you change the colour all the active text is recoloured too. If you create a new layer or put a select box around the word in question so that you can recolour it or type in a different font or colour the text cursor is cancelled and you'll have to re-select it and realign it later. That's not always easy. What I usually do (and was doing earlier) is once the (separate) text layer is finished in my primary (black) colour choice I copy it into another layer or layers and recolour each one in full, to for example red text and another with green text. The layers are aligned so 'all' you need to do is remove everything but the red and green letters/words/sentences you want to insert into the original layer from their respective layers. You then go down to that original black text layer and erase those same letters/words/sentences. Once done simply merge the red and green text layers down and you'll have a single text layer with the inserted, coloured content all perfectly aligned. It is still a hassle but I can't think of a better way of doing it without having to type each piece of text in a different colour in the same layer and moving it around, aligning everything manually.

Boris Johnson was actually born and bought up in the US. On the subject in question: have you actually tried using the portable version I linked in the previous post? There can be many things that might have affected your attempt to update. Your anti-virus software could be be involved, that is what caused a problem for me on one PC when I tried to update PDN just as you did. I understand you being annoyed that the update failed however it is not the end of the world. The hassle you've had is unfortunate but nobody is lying to you and it is certainly not the fault of the posters here who are all trying to help you sort out the problem. Do what I suggested: please try the portable version of the most recent PDN version and post back here the result.

I'm English, we never lie except when it is in our own interests to do so and even then we feel very bad about it. 😀 So you can trust my advice which I've suggested on other threads like this concerning problems with the latest PDN update. Go to the download links and get the portable version. No installation needed and if it does not work there is most likely a problem with your system.

Might help to know exactly what plugins are involved. Something like BoltBait's plugin pack, which is pretty much a must have, uses an installer menu tool which should install all the plugins or selected plugins correctly without any user involvement at all. So the questions are: have the plugins been installed, why they are not working and what exactly does "not working" mean? Does it mean the plugins aren't listed in the PDN Effects menu or are they there but just not functioning?

Just tried to install v4.3.7 on a Win7 SP1 64bit machine directly via the PDN updater menu option (v4.2.16). then the online installer and finally the offline installer. All refused to install with the updater and online installer provoking an error dialogue box just saying that PDN 4.3.7 failed to install. No obvious clues as to why. This is from the original v4.3 online installer I found to test which, as expected, tried to install the latest version v4.3.7:- The offline installer did not even do that it just failed the install after a few seconds. Checked everything and tried again but same problem which I eventually tracked down to my anti-virus (AV) program on that PC. It is quarantining four DLLs used by the installer:- Even if I stop it from moving the files from the installer zip to the 'Virus Chest' when I start the installer those DLLs are copied to temporary files in AppData/Roaming and unless I pre-empt that by adding AV path exclusions to those locations the AV automatically quarantines them. When I restore them that doesn't help because they are re-created each time I run the installer and that triggers the AV to quarantine them again as new suspicious behaviour. I could probably add a general exclusion but I really can't be bothered to mess around with that. NB. This problem is specific to this AV, on another Win7 PC I have I updated to v4.3.x a long time ago. The version of the AV I'm using is old because the most recent version is a pain in the butt and I'm currently doing a makeover of that PC anyway so I'm not going to waste my time submitting a report to them about this. However I thought it worth mentioning the problem here because this is the first time I've had any trouble updating PDN on that PC so it might also apply to some other users having install issues. The portable version of v4.3.7 works without any problem and as this is my preferred way of using most software I'm more than happy enough to use it instead. As I and others here have said in this and other related threads I'd suggest any people here having similar install problems do the same and save themselves what could be a lot of hassle.

It likely is not a PDN issue. That message is one of the occasional big annoyances you get with some files/folders even when you are the admin. Another typical message is it's " ....in use by another program...." but Windows does not 'think' to be helpful and tell you what that is. In this case, (that's the online installer I believe), I'd guess the installer is accessing something online. Quick thing to try is simply to restart the PC and try to delete it again, maybe disconnect your PC from the internet first.

I just save as a .PDN file first then re-save as a .PNG, usually adding WIP (Work In Progress) to the name. But I've never had any trouble just saving as a WIP .PNG to see what it looks like at the final resolution/size I'm intending to use then unflattening it to continue with the job.

No problems for me using this latest version in portable form with a Win7 64bit PC. Later EDIT:- Just updated the 4.3.3 version installed on another Win7 64bit PC - no problems with that either.

I don't understand the particular problem either as described but there are recolouring plugins like Red Ochre's Recolour Choice and another one called Manual Color which might be what is wanted.

You don't even need to cut and paste anything. The image has a transparent background so you can just use the rectangle select tool on the area with the text in question and then use the same Color Balance plugin as Pixey suggested above or similar recolouring plugin.

Erebor also known as the Lonely Mountain?

If you are desperate to use the new version why not try the portable version of it instead? I'm sure the real tech heads here will sort you out but using a portable version when available, and that applies to almost any program, usually avoids full installation problems such as the one you have described. https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/118729-paintnet-432-is-now-available/ https://github.com/paintdotnet/release/releases