Crazy Man Dan

Is that the final PhotoShop version? It looks quite good to me. Paint.NET doesn't have a Gradient tool for blending. There are ways to accomplish this effect, but they take a great deal of work to get to work properly without a Blend tool. If you'd like, I could make a tutorial on how to get this to work with Paint.NET. I was planning on making one for glass effects anyway, so I could easily adapt it to glass orbs.

Hey, even the websites for most major companies aren't standards-compliant. Many I've seen don't even have a Doctype declaration to define the standards they won't follow... I guess it annoys me more than the average bear because I'm a Web Developer myself who's obsessed with standards, but if it works, I'm not going to pick. Anyway, how'd this localization topic get on a Web Design kick? Back to the music! Dan

Chrome is a difficult effect to pull off, mostly because of the fact that chrome is highly reflective and doesn't have much of a color itself. So, you may have a grey color to simulate the metal, but in order to make it look like chrome, you'll have to add in very bright highlights and very dark lowlights to create the reflection. The difficult part is getting the reflection to define the curves of the shape you're making. If you have an existing image with the rims you want, than it shouldn't be too difficult to get the shape right just by following the shape of the existing image, but if you're skinning different rims onto an image, you'll have to go from scratch, and it may take you a few tries to get it looking just so.

But what if you need to add to the selection, subtract from the selection, move the selection, just want to copy what you've selected... The [M] key on the keyboard is a hotkey to the "Move" tool, and will save the time needed to take the mouse over to the toolbar and back again. I think, looking strictly from a usability standpoint, that an automatic switch to the "Move" tool after making a selection is counterintuitive.

Hmmm... I've never tried printing any of mine before. I'll check out what's up and get back to you. Thanks for letting me know! Dan

Of which tutorials are you speaking? (I have a few tutorials on my website, so I want to make sure I fix it if it's me..)

It seems to be fixed with 2.5!

Good catch! I forget about the addition of the Move Selection tool sometimes, but it really is a Godsend. But yes, you'll want the "Move Selected Pixels" tool to affect the image underneath your selection.

When you have selected the portion of the image you want to rotate, switch to the "Move" tool. You'll see the selection tint clear and handles appear around the selection boundary. Then, right-click anywhere on the canvas and drag to rotate only the selected area. The Eraser tool sets the pixels behind it to 0% Alpha (completely transparent). The checkered background is just an inner-application representation that that area is transparent, and it is saved as white in a format that doesn't support transparenct or as areas of transparency in .gif or .png. If you want to see a solid color behind your erased areas instead of the checkered background, create a new layer and move it to the very top of the layer stack (it'll be the lowest layer, behind all the others) and fill it with the color you want to see in the areas you erase.

I'm sorry, but I'm not exactly sure what it is you're describing. Do you perchance have a screen shot of what it's doing that you don't want it to do that you could post up here? A more descriptive description may also be helpful if you don't have a screen shot available.

I already posted this in response to your question in the other topic. I guess that's what I get for reading top-down... Anyway, just to make sure you see it:

Make sure you've flattened the image first. If you copy/paste without flattening, you'll only get the contents of the current layer. The "Flatten" command is under the "Image" menu.

Why, so it does not! My apologies. Thanks for catching my error! Dan

If you've chosen to make Paint.NET the default editor for .[extention] images, then you need only right-click -> Edit to open it in Paint.NET. If it's not in your "Open With >" roll-out, select "Choose Program..." and look in the list for Paint.NET. After you've used it to open an image once, it should stay in your "Open With >" submenu so you don't have to select it from the list again. The more often you use Paint.NET to open images from the "Open With >" submenu, the higher in the list it will get.

After downloading, you should have an .exe file located wherever you chose to save during the download process. (The current version is titled PaintDotNet_2_5_RC2.exe, but that will vary depending upon which version you downloaded.) Just double-click on the .exe file, and follow the instructions, and you'll be using Paint.NET in no time! Well, not no time as in "no time", but no time as in "as long as it takes to install on your computer time," but you take my meaning... If you need more specific help, just ask! Dan

On a similar note: When you switch between the selection methods, how difficult would it be to change the cursor to reflect the selection type? e.g.:A little plus sign when holding [CRTL], etc. I don't know though, what with right-click being subtraction... I use several different graphics programs (PS in class, GIMP/Paint.NET/Artweaver at home), and they all have their different takes on what key toggles what method, so I often rely on the cursor to tell me what I'm doing. I know the status message tells you, but once you click, it changes to the coordinates, 'n such. Perhaps, if cursor swapping is out, you could have it re-display the key-toggles in the status bar when the Rectangle Selection tool button is clicked, regardless of whether or not it is already the chosen tool? I don't know. Just some things to consider for down the road, Dan

And more info comes your way: When I posted earlier, I was working with the window taking up most of the screen, but not maximized. Today I was working with the window maximized, and I noticed that you can't drag to the right at all when you're zoomed in, because the canvas extends all the way to the right side. I think that is more in line with what Typh was describing earlier.

Well, there's the right side of the Home page, right near "Frequently Asked Questions." You may be able to put it over there. Or you could change the Roadmap link across the top to "Documentation" like it was in the old layout. Then that could link to a page with Roadmap, Frequently Asked Questions, and Tutorials on it. If I remember correctly, those were the options you got on hover with the old layout. I dont know. Something like that, perhaps. Well, I'll disable my link for now. Thanks for the answer! Dan

I was working on my Paint.NET tutorials site, and I noticed an error. It was an error on my part, but I need your help to fix it. I linked to your tutorials page from my site, but it seems that with the layout change, your Tutorials page has moved. However, I cannot find it on your site to change my link. Do you still have a tutorials page on your site? I don't want to harbor a broken link for too long... Thanks for your response, Dan

I think I've experienced this before... Here's what I've noticed: Open up Paint.NET and make a new image 500px wide by 100px high. Then, zoom in to 400%. You'll see that the horizontal scrollbar is there, but since the canvas is so short, there is no vertical scrollbar. Now, switch to the Rectangle Select tool, click in the center of the canvas, and drag off the image to the right. Because the scrollbar isn't there, you can only drag the cursor, what, ten pixels or less off the right side of the image, so the image scrolls very slowly. This will also happen when dragging off to the left side if the rulers are turned off. I'm not sure if this is the same behavior Typh was describing, but I thought I'd throw it out there. I know it was bugging me a lot when I was making the banner for The Sketchpad, but I forgot to bring it up. A side note: (Actually, a bottom note, but...) I was testing to make sure this example would work at different screen resolutions, and I ran into another bug I think I remember someone reporting a long while ago: when the Paint.NET window is minimized during a resolution change, it will not restore when clicked upon. You'll have to right-click and select "Restore" to get it to pop back up. I don't remember if you guys ever found a cure for this, but I thought I'd bring it to your attention. That's all, folks! Dan

Before you it, you'll have to have it hosted on a server somewhere. Photobucket offers free image hosting if you want to use it. If you don't want to set up an account, you can attach it to an e-mail and send it off to me (crazymandan@gmail.com) and I'll post it up for you.

Yep, there's a Beta 5. It has curvy lines!

To do that, you'll have to select the part you want to stay in color, either by using a combination of selection additions or by tracing around it with the Lasso tool. Once you have it traced, copy it (copy, not cut - you'll see why later), create a new layer, and paste it there. It should be pasted at the same coordinates as the source, so you shouldn't have to move it anywhere. Once you've pasted the selection in the new layer, switch back to the original layer. Under the Layer -> Adjustments submenu, select the "Desaturate" option, and the background will turn greyscale, but the new layer with your pasted selection will stay in color. The reason why you should copy in lieu of cutting is because you won't have to get the selection perfect the first time. If you cut the selection out, you've committed yourself. If you copy, you can make a wider selection, leaving an extra margin around the side of what you want to stay color to ensure you get it all, then use the eraser once it's in the new layer. Then, the greyscale image behind it will be shown, instead of a transparent area. I hope that helps! If you have any more questions, just ask! Dan, The Crazy Man

Looking good! I like that reflection! It's so... reflective... <_< I can't wait to try out the new features. Just four days from now! Hooray for Mondays!

What he meant by re-rendering the color wheel was re-rendering the actual color wheel itself dependant upon the brightness level selected with the slider. What they want to do is make it as intuitive as possible for the average user. When you click on a color, it is assumed you want that color. If a user new to image editing clicked on red on the color wheel and got a maroon color because of the slider, they may not understand what was going on. So to remedy this effect, they would have to render the color wheel anew at each brightness change so that the color selected on the wheel was actually the final color. Think about this: If the slider was not reset to full brightness each time you set the color to a new hue, since the default Primary color is black, you would have to manually raise the brightness slider off of black each time you started Paint.NET. As it is, it can be a little annoying when you find a color you almost like that's not at full brightness on the slider and want to compare variations at that same brightness level because you have to guess at the full hue and then guess again at the brightness level you just had. But it is a minor annoyance, like a fly or something like that. And for the sake of clarity and introductory usability, it can easily be worked around.