Crazy Man Dan

You mean, an animated .gif file? There are some programs that do that. Some are standalone editors (Microsoft's GIF animator, as well as others), and there are some image editors that can save them as well (The GIMP, PhotoShop, ArtWeaver, et cetera). Paint.NET does not save animated .gif files at this time.

I'm just wondering, if you want to crop the image, why do you want to resize it back up later? Depending upon how much you crop it, that could result in serious quality loss. But anyway, cropping would be the first step. No use in wasting RAM to process alterations to portions of the image you will just be cutting off later. Next, it all depends upon the image. I just did a test to see what happens to the image depending upon which you do first, and I was unable to notice a significant difference. There was a little more depth in an area with extreme brightness, but other than that, there was no difference between the two.

I know I've had peoples e-mail me before about some basic PDN workings questions or about my tutorials, but never about technical support. Perhaps because your username is Alph Tech / STUART... >_>

Well, mine (the "Eternity" one) is just an image with three layers. The Background layer is the image, one I made a ling time ago with WorldMachine / Terragen. The next layer is the large background text. The text was made in white, and the layers opacity setting was dropped (somewheres around 15%-25%, if I remember correctly). Then the topmost layer is the smaller, readable text. That one has the same text in the same color, but at a smaller font size. Then that layers opacity was dropped (less this time, around 80% or so).

\m/>_<\m/ --G-Mail!-- <_< I'll be quiet now...

Yep, Mangix is right. You get the compressor options dialog once you pick your extension and click "Save." Each file type has it's own set of options, so you have to pick your file type before any program would know what options to send you.

I'm sorry Rick. I don't mean to be such a harsh taskmaster... Thanks for fixing it!

In order to move the image around, firstly draw a selection around it. The Move Selected Pixels tool will only move pixels that are selected. Also, after you've imported the layer, press the appropriate arrow key on the layer stack window to move the layer behind the TV. (I can't remember if it's up or down... It's been a while since I've used the inverted layer stack.)

When you save a .jpg in Paint.NET, it automatically flattens it. After you've saved it, press [Ctrl]+[Z] or Edit -> Undo. That will un-flatten it, and you can pick up where you left off.

Or were you meaning something like that, where the text is overlayed over the image in a translucent white, where you can still see the image behind it, but it's lighter? p.s. That image was not made with Paint.NET (I don't have access to Paint.NET on this computer), but it was made solely using features Paint.NET has. This effect can be easily done using Paint.NET.

If you're using Paint.NET version 2.5, make sure your "T.V. Program" layer is above the T.V. image layer in the Layers window. The layer order in the stack in inverse of the order on-canvas. They've fixed this for 2.6, though.

Alright, after a little more testing... It seems it only happens when the window is at a certain height. To reproduce this behavior: 1. Open up Paint.NET 2. Press the New Layer button in the stack window at least 3 times. It works no matter how many layer you have, but 4 layers is the minimun due to the Layer Stack minimum height restriction. 3. Resize the stack window so that the Background layer just goes off the bottom. You should see the errant draw here. 4. Watch the top boundary of the Background layer preview as you resize the Stack window smaller vertically. Just as the background preview would go off screen completely, the Stack window will redraw properly. Alternately, you can size the Stack window to its minimum height while you have three layers in the image, then add a fourth layer. The Stack window will be redrawn with the visibility checkboxes off the side. But if you then drag the Stack window taller, then shrink it back to its minimum height, it will be redrawn properly. I dunno. Maybe you can understand that? <_<

I'm getting this strange bug in 2.6 Beta1. Whenever the Layers Stack window is shorter than needed to view all the layers at once, the vertical scroll bar appears on the right side. No, this isn't the bug... The bug comes in here: regardless of how wide I make the window, I always get a horizontal scrollbar because the vertical scrollbar overlays the visibility checkbox. Since I suck at discribing things without pictures... None of the layer names are long enough to be pushing the checkbox off the screen at that width, but I can't access the visibility checkbox without scrolling over. Then I can't see the full layer preview to select the layer I want without scrolling back. It sounds small, but it really gets annoying quickly... I haven't noticed this until today, so I'm not sure whether it's been in 2.6 from the beginning, it's new for Beta1, or it's something screwy with my computer.

The Drop Shadow tutorial is right here: http://www.freewebs.com/cmdsketchpad/we ... shadow.htm If you have questions, there's a sticky topic up there where you can post, or you can make your own topic. I hope it helps somewhat! Dan Edit: Also, as for the Zoom blur, I know Doker had a Warp Blur in his Blurs.dll effects package, but the package doesn't work with anything past 2.5 Beta4 I believe. It's too bad, as I really liked his blurs with their adjustable center points. But they won't work with current PDN versions. In fact, I don't even know where I'd put the DLL to get PDN to even try to open it with 2.6 Beta1. There's no Effects folder that I can see. PaintDotNet.Effects.dll is in the root program folder, so I put blurs.dll there, but it didn't throw an error and it didn't load the effects. So that's a question for you, Rick. Where would one put new effects DLLs?

I'd say: Put a big "DONE" stamp on that one! It used to happen if the image extended off the canvas horizontally but not vertically. When that happened, there was no scrollbar on the right. If the window was maximized, then you couldn't drag the mouse off the canvas to get the window to scroll. If the rulers were turned off, you couldn't get it to scroll to the left either. But now, it works just fine. Thanks!

I've never had trouble copying images from FireFox to the clipboard, but I have noticed that FireFox has the same quirk as The GIMP when copying to the clipboard: the Alpha channel is changed to black, so any transparency is nullified. At first I thought the problem was with Paint.NET, but then I pasted from the clipboard back into The GIMP, and I noticed the same blackness. Maybe it has something to do with the GTK+ Library? They (FireFox, The GIMP) are both natively Linux programs, but I don't know if FireFox uses GTK+. I dunno, I'm no programmer. I'm just making myself sound stupid... Anyway, I'd say it'd be a safer practice to save the images to your local hard drive, then File -> Open... (or Open in New Window...) to get at it.

Perhaps, as with the Text tools Move widget, you could create a pulsating button near the origin like this: That way, people wouldn't have to move their cursor off the canvas to click a button, then back on to start a new line. Though how that would work with localization, I don't know. Just throwing ideas out there.

Yeah, the images for my tutorials website were all made with Paint.NET as well. The other day, though, I accidentally put up an image made with The GIMP (the link highlight image). I didn't realize it right away, but I got it fixed now. Silly me... Anyway, nice work both of you!

The GIMP also has a Blur / Sharpen painting tool. But for right now, Paint.NET doesn't have that tool. Last I heard, the devs were looking into it.

Yep, the drop-shadow tutorial is up. Whenever I get a new tutorial, I make a new topic about it and Rick usually has it 'stickied' by the next day. I make a new topic each time so that if anyone has a question about a specific tutorial, there will already be a topic devoted to that tutorial in which they can ask their questions.

I think they were talking about a file tree. Like the "Explorer Bar -> Folders" option in Windows Explorer. That way, you could open up new files without leaving the main UI window. But I don't see this as being too feasible until MDI is implemented.

I actually started working on this one the other day... Well, no time like the present. I'll get on it right now.

Yeah, they switched their homepage to a new layout, and they haven't made a new Tutorials page yet.

Nope, sorry. Paint.NET doesn't do animated .gif's.

Oh yeah, I forgot about the blending modes... In addition to "Multiply," if you have an image with a white background, the "Overlay" blend mode works well to preserve the white background while coloring the grey-scale. You can get some rather interesting effects just by playing around with blend modes. But as for the books on how to use it, I don't know of any. I know I have a few topic-specific tutorials, but nothing on general use of the program yet.