IHaveNoName

Here's my quick-ish take on the image, not entirely happy but I'm quite pleased with some elements:-

I was a bit worried you might take the comments I made the wrong way despite my intentions. Agree about the shield picture, too much green and the shield texture is odd. But it occurred to me that the shield might be a real photo if the particular hobby book it may be intended for is enameling or perhaps leather craft work or something similar. In that case the shield and snake design may not be up for modification as it is an actual project example. Thinking about it even the background could be real too - I've seen similar professional photographic background designs (in the 1990s) and, I hate to admit it, created a few like that myself out of bed sheets and whatever paint I happened to have around. That would bring it down to the lighting used for the photography although the background/colour could be changed We need to know more about that image and whether it was all designed from scratch using PDN or other graphics program and whether any parts of it are imported photos. It might also help to know, if that is what it is for, the hobby craft represented.

Being super critical so no disparaging of anyone's work intended: both good. In welshblue's remake the shadowing and particularly the offset definitely raises the text more effectively but I'm not entirely convinced by the positioning of the highlights and the highlighting of the upper text line only. I was thinking it might work with a distinctly different but complimentary colour used for EVANS as the yellow 'moon' crescent symbol is also, presumably, meant to be just the C for CRAIG ie. I'm assuming the surname is EVANS is not CEVANS. The two lines of text overlapping I do not like in either case. If the top of the V and the feet of the A were properly aligned, almost to create a symbol, it might work better but that would throw off the alignment with the rest of the text. The left of the E and R should be vertically aligned but if you used the same spacing (kerning) between the E and the V (if aligned with the A of RAIG above) the rest of EVANS would look awkward. For that reason I'd separate the two lines of text so there's a distinct gap between them. The only other hyper critical thing I'd say is that the crescent symbol is very rough around the edges in the original. That needs attending too. The second picture with the snake on a shield the lighting direction is frontal and whilst I understand why it was done like that frontal lighting always flattens the image and make it look a bit boring. The lighting is everything with an image like that and if you want some inspiration there are some in depth YT and other tutorials for how to create shields that look far more interesting and have elaborate lighting/reflection effects with Photoshop which could be mimicked by PDN with a little work. The snake should be lifted in some way and if you could go multi-colour rather than just black that might just do it. For me the other main problem is the background. I have that problem myself - you think about the primary subject but not enough about the background and you end up going for a plain colour or graduated one or, as I suspect in that case, try all the Render plugins you have looking for something that seems OK, like clouds or fire. Been there done that. It always looks like a lazy, unimaginative afterthought because that is what it was. I wish I could suggest a solution here but as I'm in the same boat I won't.

As an aside: seeing in that OP photo a 22+ years old 'grey slab' Playstation beside the TV, presumably working and with what looks like a genuine original PS controller too ie. not Dualshock. Love old technology like that which can still be used and enjoyed.

So it was in Dafont's Script > Various - after going through the 1700 Calligraphy fonts I must admit went through the 2600+ Various fonts there very quickly so I must have missed it when I sneezed (hay fever ) or something like that. If you look on that page it say the 2 fonts there are demos: Regular and Extruded but after searching around those two are the only ones in the Aprilea family so my guess is that font is Regular and that at some point in the original image's life it was corrected or slightly reformatted, just as welshblue demonstrated. It is odd that it is not an exact match though. I've tried it myself and it clearly requires more than just horizontal compression and vertical expansion to get a near match. But even then the "F" in particular seems slightly more rotated than the rest and needs specific manipulation to get it as upright as in the example. Short of separating all the letters and adjusting them individually it can not be matched exactly. But Aprilea must be the font.

We're going on a font hunt. There is a big problem with a font search using just that limited sort of an example. Web sites like that ^ or my previous favourite:- https://www.whatfontis.com/ now with an utterly ruined GUI caused by a horrible web site redesign, will have great difficult separating the letters. The poor resolution and not being able to cut out anything easily other than the capital "F" the chances of them identifying the font is slim. I've tried it, including separating some of the letters (using PDN of course) but as I expected neither of those font ID web sites came up with anything close. It does look like a calligraphic font as HyReZ said but the problem with that at Dafont is there are 1700 of those plus other categories it could also be too. I've just spent an hour scrolling through most of the Dafont > Script fonts (several thousand). I can not say I've diligently searched as it only takes a moments distraction whilst fast scrolling and I could have missed it. The whole font is very upright for a calligraphical style font and looks 'narrow' too so should have stood out. I saw nothing even vaguely like the very distinctive styling of the "F" - upright vertical but curved embellishments . I thought Brush and Old School as classes had more similarities than the other categories but I found nothing acceptable let alone a true match. I feel there is a strong possibility it is not a Dafont hosted font - pepeh seemed uncertain if it was even downloaded from there. Just like the rest of us wanting fonts he's probably used that place more than most. It is a great resource but there are dozens of other font places it could have come from too.

Another thing which I do not think has been mentioned here is that the current download for some reason is missing its .ZIP extension. When you download it you'll just get a blank generic file with this ID: 11319_fa9595c53bd5ec1a94506fd986a86137. Programs like 7Zip will open/unpack it without issue but others may not. I tried PeaZip and it wouldn't unpack it, at least not with the default settings so I'm guessing people using other tools might also have a problem. All you have to do is add ".zip" to that ie. 11319_fa9595c53bd5ec1a94506fd986a86137.zip and it will be recognised as a ZIP file and the contents opened in the usual way. Better actually just to rename the whole thing "Curtis' Plugin Pack.zip"

^That would explain why I did not recognise zafirkalvin's description of the error message. But I was right about PDN's 24bit PNG save option not saving transparency, wasn't I?

BoltBait's Outline Object, which I think is in his plugin pack (recommended), works well. You have full outline colour choice and 10 levels of outline width. That can be repeated multiple times to build it up if necessary.

Yes, of course you can save as PNG but you must save it as 32bit to preserve transparency. If you have the PNG bit setting on Auto it will usually select the 24bit option. This does not support transparency and is probably why you're getting that message.

Good luck with that. This topic inspired me to try something similar to that described with an image I liked but the graduated background used by the original creator had been done badly (JPG artifacts, banding). I thought it would be easy to cut out the main element, a beer bottle and simply replace the background. More difficult than I expected as the bottle, being glass, was partially transparent. I ended up recreating the whole thing using a found image of a similar beer bottle, actually a better picture quality photo, but with a transparent background. Made things much easier. Consequently I would suggest that if you Google and can find the image you need with a genuinely transparent background you'll likely save yourself a lot of time and trouble you'll otherwise have playing around with the Magic Wand. You won't learn as much though.

I'm with HyReZ on this. Most of the PNGs I've found/used which actually had transparent backgrounds do not display in a browser or using the default Windows Picture Viewer (and even some other graphics programs) with a checkerboard background. It displays as white or the default base background colour for the image viewer until you open it in PDN in a new transparent layer, of course. Ergo that PNG's checkerboard background is, as HyReZ said, actually not transparent. That is the problem.

Have you tried opening the original file in another graphic program like IrfanView to see if the colour shift you're seeing repeats? I hope it is OK to mention that other program here because, in this specific case, it does include particular Colour Management control options so that may help identify if this is a colour space issue or something else.

I do not fully understand the explanations I've read but a little research indicates this is a known general image display 'problem' and probably nothing to do with PDN except in so far it apparently only supports RGB. Apparently it is all to do with the colour mode/colour space (RGB /sRGB) and. as toe-head2001 said, profile being used. Monitor colour calibration can also be involved. If there is a mismatch when the image is saved and re-opened the colour shifts a small amount. At least that is what I think it means. https://petapixel.com/2009/09/17/why-you-should-probably-use-srgb/ Just Google "TIFF file color change" and you'll find plenty more information on such matters including old threads from this forum. If somebody here can explain it in really simple terms it would be helpful and appreciated.

This sounds very similar to this topic we had here a couple of months ago. https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/114252-problem-shape-type-rounded-rectangle/?tab=comments#comment-558037 The 'solution' it seems is pretty much the same as I found back then - with AA off do not use a 1 pixel brush width use the 2 pixel default. At the very least you'll get a symmetrical shape under the conditions described.

It is difficult to understand exactly what you are doing from the description but you seem to be saying you are saving the image at some point. If so: what format are you using to save the image - JPG? If so that is likely the problem. Save as PNG instead.

But it is far easier for a user having a readme which comes with the plugin rather than having to go to a web site, search and find the information amongst a load of other stuff. You see this sort of thing too much nowadays........with everything. You want an instruction manual? Yes, download it in a PDF from the manufacturers web site. You go there and find it is no longer available because the model you bought was a couple of years old or visa versa: the model has been updated but the manual has not. Hate that. Policing would be no problem, just ask plugin creators to include a readme. If RB let it be known that is what he'd prefer most would happily comply. I have faith in human nature - ask nicely and decent people will respond without having to be policed.

I've thought it should be made mandatory for plugin creators to provide a readme with the plugin which tells the user not just how and where to install it but also both its display name (not always exactly the same) and where it appears in the PDN tools menus. The latter in particular is not always obvious or logical eg. Red Ochre's CompoTool is installed under the "Photo" menu , three more of his plugins are installed under "Composition" and there are composition aiding plugins by other creators in "Render". It would be an onerous task doing this for some large plugin packs but in general I think it should encouraged. At the very least it would stop the regular threads we get here like this about such matters.

Yep, Drop Shadow, Object Shadow and Inner Shadow are all good. You can get some potentially useful shadow like effects from Object Bevel too. I also like using the crudest 'solution' too if I want crisp shadows. I just copy the text to a new lower layer, convert it to b/w and raise the contrast to get solid black and simply offset that as required. Just to be clear that does, of course, mean a new layer with a transparent background.

You can do much the same thing with Red Ochre's RecolourChoice plugin. Color Pick the paper background colour and set that as primary then change the plugin's setting for the replacement transparency colour (which can be anything ) to zero.

I've often wondered whether it would be better if the tools and in particular that one could/should be set to reset automatically for each layer. That might be useful for some people but for me I'm happy how it is with the individual settings re-set option, if wanted, always available. On many occasions I've made setting changes to that tool (zoom, roll, rotate, pan) and actually want to apply those across several different layers but not every one. In the case of some other tools and plugins there can be half a dozen or more settings you've changed. The prospect of having it reset to default automatically and re-applying them for each layer does not thrill me in the least.

But it has such a lot of features that you can forget what they are or how to do something unless you're using PDN on a daily basis. For a long time I kept the number of plugins I installed down to a bare minimum because I knew that would be an issue. I'm sure a lot of the 'solutions' I used and probably still use are catered for either within the main PDN tool-set or made far easier by using particular plugins. But in keeping it simple and maybe ignorant of those possibilities, arguably, you may actually learn more. IMHO too much choice is not always a good thing as it is easy lose focus on what you originally set out to do.

I only learned here recently, after years of using PDN, that you can simply change the font size to whatever you want just by editing it in the font size box. I've never needed to use anything that ^ big but I imagined there was limit. I've just checked using the default canvas: 800x600 and the maximum size is 2000pts before it goes red, as HyReZ describes happens with a much larger canvas, too. So 2000pts does appears to be PDN's actual font size limit.

I think this may be you are looking for:- https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/windows-10-apps But I do not know why it should make any difference because the actual PDN download link is to the same location. The problem seems to be a signing in one. Maybe you only have one device (perhaps a Xbox) associated with your MS account and, apparently, to be able to download something from MS Windows Store you need a registered "applicable device". My guess is that if you register your PC ie. associate it with your MS account you'd be able to download PDN. A damned stupid system from start to finish whatever the cause.

My thought is that you may have initially saved the files in an odd location particularly if you have other images open which are located elsewhere eg. you've imported a file into a new image and then copied what you were working on into that. It is easy just to click Save and not notice or realise you're saving it to the location the imported image came from. Subsequent saves (Save) will all be in that location too. I've done that sort of thing myself and had to use PDN's Open Recent menu option to find it again. Typically in my case where I collect a set of images as resources/inspiration prior to starting a particular project I might have sub-folders for backgrounds, objects, fonts etc inside the main folder. One of those is often where I've accidentally saved my work in progress. Hopefully you haven't cleaned your cache or however PDN saves that information. Use Open Recent to find your saved images and then make sure you do save them (Save As) somewhere you remember. Failing that: if you know the exact name of the image(s) you're looking for (and Windows is set to auto-index all drives) a simple desktop search could find the saved PDN files for you.