Rick Brewster

Because Intel doesn't have DirectCompute support in their video drivers.

Sweet. On my system* it runs at the same performance no matter what setting I choose for "distance", during with PaintDotNet.exe only shows a few % of CPU usage. As for an optimization hint, you can treat the OnRender() call as "this region must be finished rendering by the time you return, after which you can't write to it anymore." Contrast this to, "you can only render to this region when I hand it to you." In other words, you are allowed to render to a region at any time between OnSetRenderInfo() and the completion of your OnRender() implementation that is told to render that region. I believe Ed is using a trick in his Fast Blur such that he queues up and begins all rendering in OnSetRenderInfo() and then each OnRender() call simply waits for that region to be finished before it returns. (He is doing his own background/worker thread management.) * Core i7 980x 4.0GHz with 12GB RAM, GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 with 896MB RAM

In Task Manager, is Paint.NET using a lot of CPU time or is it actually hung?

You're contradicting yourself ... please don't go saying that something would be "easy to add".

If you want physical dimensions, be sure to set the Resolution from Image->Resize. You will need to know the physical resolution of the image precisely. (By resolution I'm referring to DPI -- dots per inch, aka pixels per real-world-unit-of-measurement). I'm not sure if the resolution can scale down to what you need; typical resolution is 96 dpi (dots aka pixels per inch) or 37.80 dots per centimeter. WIth microsocopic images you're probably looking for pixels per micrometer or less. You might just need to mentally multiply and divide by 10,000 in that case (substitute µm for cm and vice-versa).

Well it's giving an error of FileNotFound when trying to initialize DirectWrite. My psychic powers tell me it's having trouble locating dwrite.dll or one of its dependencies. (Which of course doesn't make sense because I can clearly see dwrite.dll in the list of native modules in the crash log.) From inspecting the source code, looks like the only possible failure point resulting in that specific error is a call to GetProcAddress(). Maybe you've got a virtualized dwrite.dll that doesn't include the DWriteCreateFactory export. </guess>

Another insight is that things are more laggy while a modifier key is being held down (control, shift, alt). To improve performance, you can release the modifier key after you've started drawing the 2nd+ shape. Or you can choose the combine mode from the toolbar (replace, add, subtract, intersect, invert). And, also, what pyrochild said. A 1.7ghz Pentium M cannot be expected to have high performance these days.

It is simply a feature that not many people ask for, and so it's never been implemented. There's no technical reason that makes it impossible; the feature just isn't there.

You need to determine whether you need 1-bpp for stylistic reasons, or for bandwidth/storage reasons. For stylistic reasons, the trick with Brightness&Contrast will work fine. For bandwidth/storage, you can either save with another app (I'm sure GIMP can do it), or apply B&C, then save as whatever format, and then stuff it into a ZIP. Since every pixel will be #FF000000 or #FFFFFFFF, it'll compress really well.

Paint.NET does not save to anything less than 8-bits per pixel.

*shrug* I don't know. Paint.NET hasn't been written or tested with App-V in mind. You should probably ask Aaron Parker, or the authors of App-V (Microsoft), for assistance. Your problem is not actually the same.

TIFs don't actually support layers. They support pages, which is a different concept even if the storage for it is the same. TIF is good for saving a multipage FAX, for instance.

Because almost nobody translates their effect plugins. Ask them.

merlinuwe, you do realize that SP3 has been out for 2 years now? It doesn't cost anything. SP2 isn't even supported by Microsoft anymore -- no more patches or anything. Continuing to use SP2 is dangerous and irresponsible. csm725, you should know the rules by now. Posting links to older versions is prohibited. Thread Closed

I know it sounds obvious, but have you tried rebooting?

Did the text tool work before or is this new? You said you recently updated to PDN v3.5.5. What version did you update from? Was it v3.5 - v3.5.4, or an older one like v3.36?

Your best bet is to use the standard trick of using two layers and the eraser. First, duplicate the layer. Second, run the effect or adjustment (e.g. sharpen) on the lower layer. Third, use the eraser tool on the top layer (the unmodified copy). This will effectively give you an "effect brush." Lastly, when you're all done, merge the two layers using Merge Down.

If possible don't use TIF. Paint.NET's support for TIF is basic and "best faith effort" only. It's only included because GDI+ already has a codec for it. I recommend using PNG instead. Also I'm not sure what you mean by "Photoshop-style alpha channel." Paint.NET images always have an alpha channel since 32-bit RGBA is the only pixel format that it used internally. However, an alpha mask is not natively supported, which would essentially provide a 2nd alpha channel for a layer.

The error code in the log is 0x88985003. After some digging, that is the DirectWrite error code for File Not Found. I suspect you have a font that is incorrectly installed or has been deleted improperly (I'm not sure how/why). It's probably whichever font you're trying to use with the text tool.

I have had other reports of this. It seems to happen when Paint.NET v3.5+ is installed or updated while a not-up-to-date Visual Studio 2008 is open. To help prevent this, I highly recommend enabling Microsoft Update. This option is available within the Windows Update application, and expands the updater to cover all other Microsoft software you have installed (not just the OS). It's very handy!

Nobody said you couldn't. Nobody said I couldn't, either, although you do seem to be looking for an excuse at machismo. There is more to adding a feature than just the lines of code you barf out in a weekend that implement it. Simplicity and complexity, in software development anyway, is hardly a one-dimensional property. Oh snap, indeed. user banned

And don't assume the presence or lack of a feature has anything to do with "difficulty."

What pyrochild said. Try asking your laptop manufacturer?

I e-mailed with one of the developers on DirectWrite about this. The hypothesis is that the font cache was corrupted somehow due to an improper shutdown (or something). This was causing the font cache service to reject the invalid font cache file (those .dat files you deleted) and rebuild it every time. Deleting the font cache file, as you did, fixes this. This is slightly speculative since we don't have access to your system, of course. Anyway they're aware of the issue now, if they weren't already.

This certainly will not be added to any v3.5.x release. The reason is that v3.5.x is in "maintenance mode" so that I can focus on v4.0 development. "Maintenance mode" means that updates are released only for bug fixing and maybe performance improvements. Nothing can be added which would require a localization pass (any new translation), which means no new features. (They'll be put into v4.0 instead.)