SearedIce

We've gone over this before in the Effects API forum...the current effect system doesn't permit this. I think this will be upgraded eventually. When you think about this, this sort of a inter-layer ability would enable quite a few new types of effects...

The "spraypaint" tool is great for MS Paint style images, but it just doesn't belong in a general-purpose paint program. A good way to simulate it (better than my last method) is to paint with full opacity and then use the "Effects->Frosted Glass" effect. Enjoy

There is not traditional MS Paint-style spraypaint tool. You can reduce the transparency value of the color you're using on the Paintbrush to get as close as you can to a spraypaint tool.

Eh...I had the same questions when I started. Now that I've written this up, people can search the forums and find it. If it finds its way into help files, all the better

It's pretty close to the lasso. Right now, you can work-around the lack of a brush select by simply making a new layer, turning off antialiasing, painting over what you want to select, and then magic wand that area.

Layers->Adjustments->Curves is a way to change the brightness values of a layer. The horizontal axis is the "current" value and the vertical axis is the value that the current one will become after you click "OK." For example, if I wanted to brighten up the parts of my image that are 50% gray, I would make a control point in the middle and move it up. If I wanted to make the values that are 75% bright a bit darker, I'd put a control point on the diagonal line 75% of the way to the right and move it down. Playing around with it really helps figure out how it works. A tip: only play around with it with 2 or 3 control points at first...otherwise it can be hard to understand what's going on. The Levels and Autolevels are similar...they're for controlling the brightness settings for a layer. The sliders on the left sort of limit max/min values from the original image. For example, if I had a photo of a piece of paper that was a bit dark (but I wanted it white), I would move the top slider on the left down until the paper turned white. If the letters on the page were grey and I wanted them black, I would move the bottom slider up. The sliders on the right control the output levels. The middle slider makes the image brighter/darker. The top and bottom sliders select which brightness values will be the whole images' new max/min values. Usually, you want the top right and bottom right sliders to be at the top/bottom of the slide. The middle one is the one you want to play with most often. Autolevel is an algorithm that picks positions for the slider that are probably pretty good for a normal image. Alpha blending determines whether or not when you paint (or do anything else with transparent colors) the new color is added to anything below it or simply replaces it entirely. Play around with it to see. You'll usually want it turned on.

Go to Edit->Select all. Then, put the cursor over the original photo somewhere, and hold down the right button on your mouse. Now move your mouse in a circle around the center of the photo...you'll see that it rotates. To stop rotating, release your hold on the right button. Now that it is rotated to be level, crop the painting out how you want it.

Check this out: http://paintdotnet.12.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?p=13861 Basically, a simple color fade can be used on the four edges, or you can use that gradient effect plugin to make a transparent fade on the edges. John

Yes it does...a search of the forum returns this rather old topic in which Rick explains the situation: http://paintdotnet.12.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=160

It's a panning hand. If it's active, it's the same as if you were holding down Spacebar in previous releases...good for when you're zoomed in on something.

backpacker, the PNG file would be ok...your background isn't 100% transparent there. Double check that and make sure it's fully transparent. Then PNG should work well. The image might not seem transparent if you're using older versions of IE.

Looks good, Rick. It'll be a somewhat new thing for PDN to have a dialog dedicated to config/preferenes. I do like, however, that this is something only experienced/"advanced" users would ever need/want to touch...it shouldn't get in the way of PDN being easy to use.

I updated to 2460 manually, and now it doesn't seem to be having the error. I'll keep an eye on it next time we get an update...

True, but it can be a pain to make sure that it's actually getting the 3 pixels perfect all of the way around...I imagine it's going to take as much time to check this as it would to just draw it out.

Wow...good call, evanolds. I was sorta wondering why my computer was having some memory use issues after testing to see what happens to the thumbnail viewer when you open up a bunch of stuff a few days ago. A memory leak certainly explains the problem...the heap can be nasty.

Wow...this has been discussed so many times before... I know that almost every time I open up PDN, I accidentally draw a little line with the brush, but if it were the select tool, I'd probably be accidentally selecting things and/or moving them around. My left hand is my Ctrl+Z hand...it's a 1/2 second operation to undo any accidental edits and maybe a 3/2 second operation to switch to a new tool. Either way, I do think this should be a preference thing...I just don't know where the preference setting would fit into the PDN interface. Maybe now that we have the tool dropdown thing in the menubar area, we could have a checkbox/radiobutton next to the dropdown that says something like "Default Tool" or "Startup Tool"...

The easiest/fastest way is probably to just use the Line tool to draw this border around the edge. It's just a matter of being careful that the line is straight (try holding Shift while using the Line tool) and that you are actually painting over 3 pixels.

I have 2458, and when I go to "Help->Check for Updates...", it pops up the dialog with the animated progressbar. After a couple of seconds, another dialog pops up that says "There was an error while checking for updates. There was an unspecified error while checking for updates.". I really don't know what could be the problem...I've tried it a few times (and my Internet connection is working). -John

CSS...HTML...sounds like you're a web-design kind of person. Learn Javascript and then from there, learn C#. The first computer language I learned was HTML...went to Javascript from there...now I can use Java, C, C++, C#, and pretty much any other language. You can use Javascript on websites...so you have some incentive to learn it

Manually now...copy the two layers to a new file, merge, and bring back in. I'm think that eventually, a future release with have this functionality...it's asked for a lot.

Codelab uses C#. If you have any programming experience, it shouldn't be too hard to use C#. You may need some sort of a reference for syntax issues...MSDN is usually good for that.

Ah...good point about the performance...I can feel that expense when I open the submenu...

Acquire From Clipboard is not showing up for me...has it been removed? If it has, maybe instead of the "File->Acquire" menu, you should just have "File->Acquire from Scanner or Camera"...a whole submenu for "From Scanner or Camera" seems silly. However, it looks like "Acquire from Scanner or Camera" might not fit on the File menu without being shortened in some way...

Ok, thanks. Sorry that I didn't know you knew about it...

Just for testing purposes... Rick noted that in the update thread.