Crazy Man Dan

Hey darkbob, evanolds created a plugin a while back that's more similar to the "Perspective" tools offered by other graphics software options. It's called Octagonal/Quad Reshape/Matte, and lets you either skew or crop to a region defined by 4 or 8 freeform points. It's in his plugin pack (third one down the list for the description and screenshots), which can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=27897 Give it a look and see if that's more like what you're needing.

Oh, I'll be alright now. UMT: It's always a good idea to check out the rules of an online community when joining to make sure you mesh right in. Ego Eram Reputo was referring to our [rule=6]Rule #6[/rule] which mandates descriptive thread titles. This is to help us better help you - Paint.NET gets quite a few users who are new to graphics software, so many of the questions those users have could fall under the "NEWB Help" category. Using titles with a little description of the problem in them lets everyone know right from the thread list whether or not they know enough on the subject to help out, instead of having to enter each one and diagnose what kind of answer the question needs. That being said, it's always possible someone new to graphics simply doesn't know under which specific category a question would fall. Since I'm a nice guy, I've edited the title to something more akin what we'd like to see, instead of locking the thread as The Rules warn - assistance should come before administration (though the dictionary may say otherwise), and a locked thread doesn't do any good if you need to ask clarification questions. However, make sure you check out [rule=top]The Rules[/rule] fully before posting again - you'll need to know them if you plan to continue on as an active member of the forum after this project. Aside from that, the steps Ego Eram Reputo posted up there should get you well on your way. Don't hesitate to ask any further questions, and best of luck with the project.

The thread was created on the 13th, so I'm guessing that's just a type-o.

You should probably check out a tech support board. This forum is for dealing with Paint.NET related issues, not OS issues. Good luck. Thread closed

I'm guessing you used the PHPBB search box, right? PHPBB doesn't index transferred posts well, and we moved to PHPBB3 after the original thread was posted. Next time, give SearchPaint.NET a try - it's a Google custom search, so it's significantly better. Using the keywords "Diagonal Lines", the first result was: viewtopic.php?t=6483 I believe that's the one you're looking for.

Hey yy10, have you met Rule 23? No? Oh, well Rule 23, this is yy10. yy10, [rule=23]Rule 23[/rule]. This is a Q&A forum about how to use Paint.NET, not a place to find people to do work for you. Now, if you were to come with a question like, say: "Can you guys help me here. I'm trying to cut out this Pokeball so I can put it on top of Diagla and Giratina for this header I'm making, but the edges always turn out jaggy with white specks that make it look weird. Is there a better way to do this?" ...Then we'd be happy to help! But we're not an image factory, where you can drop off the specs, then come back tomorrow for the result. Give it a shot, and if you encounter difficulties, come back with questions and we'd be happy to suggest tools or practices to get around those difficulties. Cheers. Closed

To make a layer more transparent, double-click the layer and lower the Opacity slider in the dialog box that appears. This page in the Paint.NET Help Files should answer your question: http://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/en/L ... Modes.html Please make sure you give [rule=top]The Rules[/rule] a read-through. [rule=1]Rule 1[/rule] would have pointed you in the right direction, and [rule=6]Rule 6[/rule] will explain to you why I'm closing this thread. If you have further questions, feel free to post again, but following the rules next time. Cheers. Closed

Hey hemmerling, I think you need to give [rule=top]The Rules[/rule] a once-over, specifically [rule=8]number 8[/rule]. We don't actually answer those kind of questions around here, so as to not imply continued support of past versions. Going with an old version, you may encounter bugs which have long since been fixed, and whatnot. Now, if it's a compatibility thing, we understand, but as the rule states, where our lips are sealed, Google tells all. Search for the specific version you need, and there should be a Hippo hanging around near the top with Files to cure your jones. Wink wink, and all that. Best of luck. Closed

Well, I've been AWOL for a while, and I just moved to a new computer, so I'm rocking a completely stock PDN setup right now - just installed again the other day, no third-party plugins at all. This is what I came up with: The hardest part about replicating this is the background rectangle with the rounded corners. The radius of the Rounded Rectangle tool itself was a little too big here, so I created a regular Rectangle, cut off a 5px by 5px square at one of the corners with the Rectangle Select tool, used the Ellipse tool to draw a 10px by 10px circle to fill in the gap, and copied that corner around to the others. For this job, full-on Masking is an unnecessarily arduous task. The easiest way is to just duplicate the layer with the rounded fill, adjust the Brightness / Contrast as needed, and fade it out with the Gradient tool in Transparency mode (change :AllColorChannels: to :AlphaChannel: in the toolbar) with Alpha Blending active (default, indicated by :NormalBlending: icon on toolbar). For instance, to create the subtle fade on the background that stops halfway, I duplicated the black layer, inverted the colors, used the Rectangle Select tool to select the bottom half and delete it, used the Gradient Tool in Transparency mode to fade out the top (start at the bottom and drag up to the top with the gradient), and dropped the layer opacity in the Layer Properties dialog. The front bit is just a regular Rectangle with a gradient fill and a fade highlight, so that's a deal less tricky. If you'd like to take a look at the PDN, you can download that here: Black "Toggle" Bar PDN If you'd like more specific repro steps, don't hesitate to ask.

If you want to resize a bunch of files at once, I'd go with a batch image processor such as Irfanview.

Hey Phatlight, I think you need to give [rule=top]The Rules[/rule] thread a read-through, particularly [rule=6]Rule #6[/rule]. Once you do that, you'll understand why I'm closing this thread. We'd love for you to post again once you've done so, though, but following the rules with your threads from here on. Cheers. Thread Closed.

I hate to do this, but seriously, I think you should try a different program. PDN just doesn't have the individual channel editing features you need at this time, and the workarounds are anything but intuitive. I'd suggest giving The GIMP a shot - I'm a professional web designer, and it's what I've been using to do my day-job for years, so it too comes highly recommended. As long as you don't let the first impression the UI gives put you off, you'll find a very powerful, legally free photo editing app waiting for you. It has individual channel editing capability (all four RGBA channels), direct Alpha Mask editing, anti-aliased selections, soft brushes... and it even has the two-way eraser function you mention (set the opacity slider in the tool options box, then Left Click to lower by that amount and [Alt]+Left Click to raise by that amount). It does not natively support the DDS filetype, but like PDN, there is a vast plugin repository, such as this DDS filetype plugin I found via Google search. PDN definitely stomps The GIMP in UI friendliness, but The GIMP has been in production since 1995, so it's a deal more feature-complete, and it's an incredibly powerful piece of kit once you get a feel for it.

There's a tutorial called the Pleasantville Effect which goes through the process of cutting out an object and making everything else grayscale. There's also a tutorial for cutting an object out of a photo here. You will in the end need three layers for the base effect - one for the black background, one for your daughter, and one for the bits you wish to leave colored. As far as the layer duplicated is concerned, you can always double-click on the new duplicate in the Layers stack window and give it a new, descriptive name. In the future, you should give the Paint.NET Search site a try. It's powered by Google, so it's pretty good at picking stuff up: The "Pleasantville Effect" tutorial comes up under many different search terms, including very specific queries like "colored object in black and white image". There's also a few other results of other people who have asked the same question, and in return received links to the same two tutorials. The link to the site is right at the top of the [rule=top]Forum Rules[/rule], and it'd be a good idea to give the whole thing a read-through too. Cheers.

Yeah, one thing: Make sure you're keeping up-to-date with PDN releases. T'is in [rule=7]The Rules[/rule], after all. Does the image itself have proper transparency when you actually open it in something?

Did you draw those lines on a new layer as the tutorial says? If so, you can just disable the layer on which you drew them. If not, I hope you didn't save your edits over the original file - you can re-open the original, and you may be able to use what you have now as the mask (Layers -> Import From File to bring the original into your cut-out version if you haven't resized the image at all), so you won't have to draw all those lines again, but if you drew them on the same layer as the original image, the only way to get the original image back is to undo ([Ctrl]+[Z]) everything, and that would only work if you haven't closed the image yet.

Try playing with the font sizes a bit. I find that some pixel fonts, such as Visitor TT2 - which is 12pt for 1:1 in some other programs - has to be at 10pt or 9pt in PDN for the same result, and Visitor TT1 (10pt 1:1) never looks proper at all in PDN, regardless of settings.

The effect behind the text there looks like the result of the text being semi-transparent. There's no actual blur applied to the background image, it's just tough to make out because it's being partly occluded. Something like this You can replicate this effect by creating a new layer ([Ctrl]+[shift]+[N]), typing with white text on that new layer, using the Outline Object plugin to give it a black outline, then double-clicking on the layer and lowering the Opacity slider in the dialog that pops up.

Greetings. There is no Offset tool/effect built-in to Paint.NET*, but if you use SearchPaint.NET and search for seamless texture, the first two results you'll get are for two different plugins that can help you. Click the link and give it a shot! You'd find the URL for that search engine - along with some other guidelines to keep in mind - in our [rule=top]Forum Rules[/rule]. Give them a read-through too if you haven't yet. Cheers. * Per se. You could try Rotate/Zoom with tiling enabled and drag the Pan line around (or set the X and Y Pan boxes both to 1 for a straight swap). You can give that a shot too if you need greater flexibility, but the plugins there are set as the more traditional 4-corner-swap style of offset.

Well, there's masking, and there's pseudo-masking, and there's a tutorial for each. Both of them entail using the Line/Curve tool to trace around the part you want to cut out, but one uses the Magic Wand and Feathering to cut out and smooth the subject, where the other fills in the entire area and uses the Alpha Mask Importer to hide the background. You can give both a try, and find out which one works better for you. Cutting Out Images the Easy Way Alpha Masking If I were to suggest one, of course I'd choose the Alpha Masking option, but that's mainly because I wrote it. The "Easy Way" method is certainly easier, and it's up to you whether the benefits of using Alpha Masking are worth the extra time. Cheers. (I see d.a beat me to the response, but he didn't mention me, so I'm posting anyway. )

Honestly, I don't know whether or not there's a tutorial for this already, but I'm in a mini-tutorial writing mood anyway, so I just made a little demo. Here's the starting image I'll be using: (Carrie Underwood, of course. ) With your original image open, create a new layer. I'm going to call this layer "Enhancement" from here in, but you can name it whatever you wish (or not name it, which is usually what I end up doing ). Use the color wheel to select a vibrant color. It doesn't matter which color at the moment, as we will be adjusting it later, but we will need a color of some sort to adjust - black or white won't work as easily. Using the Line/Curve tool ( :LineCurveTool: ), trace out the outline of the iris on the Enhancement layer, then use the Paintbrush ( ) to paint in the center of the outline, so the eyes are completely covered over with the color you chose at the start: I applied a slight blur to mine as the cut was fairly obvious, and the blur helped to smooth out the transition. At this point, double-click on the layer "Enhancement" in the Layers panel to bring up the Layer Properties dialog. Under Blending, click the drop-down that says "Normal" and select "Overlay". This will change the blending mode of the layer, overlaying the color on this layer over the top of the visible layers underneath it. Now, I already did some testing before I chose my color to find which one would cause the change I wanted, but odds are it won't look quite as good at first - the first color I chose looked terrible. To adjust it, make sure the "Enhancement" layer is selected, then open the Hue/Saturation adjustment (Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation... or [Ctrl]+[shift]+) and play with the sliders to get a color that works. The Hue slider changes the base color (green to blue to purple, et cetera), the Saturation changes the intensity of the color (how colorful the color is), and the Lightness changes the brightness of the color. Play around with the sliders and you can get just about any color - for example, here's an adjustment with a green outcome: When you're using blending modes, the brightness heavily alters how much impact the new color has in changing the old color. With Overlay, low values on the slider tend to change the final brightness a lot, and higher values give a more subtle effect. Similarly, a low value on the Saturation slider will reduce your "Enhancement" color nearer to gray, and grayscale values don't do too much by way of changing color. Each color will react differently, and the final color depends upon what color the eye was in the original photo, so this may require a good bit of tinkering on all three sliders. Note that Overlay is not the only blending mode that will work. I find it often yields the most realistic results, but other modes can result in interesting effects as well. Check out the same green as above, but on Reflect instead of Overlay: It's up to you what type of effect you're going for, but in the end it's pretty simple - just a small fill of color over the iris and a change in blending mode. A lot of tinkering room, but nothing too complex. I hope that helps a bit. If you have any questions, feel free to ask 'em. Cheers, and happy adjusting.

Ah. Well, if you have the PSDs, then it should be cake. There's a Photoshop File plugin for Paint.NET, and after you install it you can use Paint.NET to open the layered PSDs. Once you're in there, uncheck the layers that have the text on them and save the file as a new JPG without the text.

Hey sweetpea, welcome to the forums. Usually, when you get pre-made web template pieces-parts, they're given in a layered format such as a PSD, where the text elements are on their own individual layers so you can turn them off and replace them with your own text. If these JPGs are all you received, then it'll be a bit more tricky for some of them. The first one is relatively simple, since the text elements are all on backgrounds consistent with their alignment - the text flows horizontally here, and the backgrounds behind the text are all either solid or horizontally repeating. You can use the Rectangle Select ( ) tool to highlight an area of the text, use the Eyedropper ( :ColorPicker: ) tool to select the background color from around the text, then fill the area ( Backspace key ) with that color, covering over the text. For the gradient bit behind "yoursite.com", it is a true vertical fade, meaning that across the length of the text the gradient behind it does not change as you move horizontally. This means that you can use the Rectangle Select ( ) tool to select an open are of the gradient on the left side of the text, then use the Move Selected Pixels ( ) tool to stretch it out horizontally over the text. (If you need more step-by-step instruction with pictures and the like, I'd be happy to put something together.) The second one, though, has text effects, drop shadows, and complex backgrounds behind the text, so it's going to be tough. In fact, with the effect behind the "snazzy slogan" section, I'd count it as impossible - you could theoretically use the Clone Stamp ( :CloneStamp: ) tool to cover over the text with the visible portions of the background, but there's practically no way you'd be able to match it up smoothly with the existing bits, and you'd loose the variation of the original background. My advice would be to go back to the person who created these in the first place and see if you can't get the layered versions. It'll be a lot less trouble in the long run. As an aside, when posting on this board, we ask that you use descriptive thread titles so that we can tell the questions apart - there's nothing harder than keeping threads straight if a dozen of them are ambiguously titled "Help Needed". I edited your thread title as an example of what we like to see, and the rest of our desired code of conduct can be found in the [rule=top]Forum Rules[/rule]. Please keep that in mind for the future. Cheers.

Hey Mickmac. Paint.NET has never come packaged with fonts - it uses the same fonts that are installed on your system (C:\Windows\Fonts folder). If you've seen the font somewhere before, then it was installed on the system you were using at the time. You could perform a Google search for the font name and, if found, install it on your system using the tutorial found here: viewtopic.php?f=37&t=26983 If you were using a different computer then than you are now, and you still have access to the other computer, you could grab the TTF file for that font from the C:\Windows|Fonts directory there, then copy it to yours. If your still using the same system, then that's really weird, as fonts usually don't just disappear. If so, did you uninstall any programs around the time you noticed its absence?

:shock: *covers Rick's ears* Don't ever let Rick hear you say that! He'll rip off your arm and hit puppies with it! Anyway, I'm a web designer myself and kind of a keyboard shortcut-monkey. This is the method I use to grab bits and pieces of a larger design while preserving the file name of the original. With your image the way you want it - layer visibility and whatnot - for the section you're trying to get: 1) Create your Rectangular Selection around the area you want 2) [Ctrl]+[shift]+[F] - Flatten the image 3) [Ctrl]+[C] - Copy the merged section 4) [Ctrl]+[Z] - Restore the layers 5) [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[V] - Paste as a new image 6) [Ctrl]+ - Save the new image as your separated piece 7) [Ctrl]+[W] - Close the new image to keep the tabs free of clutter So, it's seven steps, but it's pretty quick because it's all keyboard shortcuts. The trick is to never take your finger off the [Ctrl] key. Give it a shot, and who knows: it just might work for you too! Perchance it will help somewhat in the interim.

Using too many fonts at one time is sloppy, but having a nice selection of fonts and using them responsibly can really help to keep things fresh. There are a few instances where only a handful of fonts work, but sometimes it's a nice change to throw Cicle in there instead of Tahoma or Calibri. And there's nothing like Birth of a Hero on a default Windows installation. So yeah, you don't want to go overboard, tossing 10 different fonts into one design, but I find that having greater choice can actually aid creativity. I currently have 873 fonts installed on my computer. There are a few I use often, a few I've used only a couple of times, and plenty I've never used, but I'll always check them to see how they fit into whatever I'm designing at the time. But be warned - large font lists can make navigating font menus excruciatingly slow in some programs. Paint.NET is pretty good, but it does hang noticeably when you get to the more complex fonts like Morphina, Steadmanesque, or anything by Gyom Séguin. I'd also advise against just grabbing everything you can get your hands on. There are some fonts I see out there that I'd never have a use for. Just grabbing one off the front page of DaFont now: David (no offense d.a ). My personal graphic design style is nothing like that, and something like that would never fit into one of my designs, so there's no use in me downloading it. You should look through the list of fonts, see how each one flows, and only download one if you think you'll have a use for it. It'll take more time, but it strengthens the relationship.