KrisVDM

At first sight, it seems that the crash occurred after the effects were installed. Can you check? Kris.

That would indeed prevent the update check, indefinitely. I'd like to understand why people would want to do that? Wouldn't you want to be notified of an update? For example, I just released version 5.0.3. In this version, the Drop Shadow effect is a lot faster than in the previous version. And I'm not talking about a few percentages. Depending on hardware, image characteristics and parameter values, it can be more than twice as fast as the previous version. Sometimes updates contain bugfixes too. Wouldn't you want to know? Obviously, I understand that you don't want to update during your current work session, but nothing requires you to do that. You'd still want to know that a new version is available, would you not? Just trying to understand.

This might happen if you have two copies of Paint.NET installed, for example because you had it installed using a download from the website, and then later installed through the Microsoft Store as well. If that is the case, I suggest you remove the old copy, and keep only the most recent one.

Sorry about that. The website has indeed been down for a few days. I moved it to a different server, and it should be back up really soon now.

They do. When 5.0 is out of beta and officially released, I'll release an updated version optimized for paint.net 5.0.

The Fade Edge effect fades the edges of the image (the current layer to be precise), not the region that was selected. If you have a selection, all that does is select the portion of the image where the effect is applied, it doesn't change the effect itself. One way to solve this might be that you copy your selection into a new image and apply the effect there, and then copy the result back. Of course, the downside of that would be that you don't see the actual result until you copy the processed image back. I do see the point of what you're trying to do here, and I'll think about a solution. It's not trivial though. Remember that the selection can have any shape you want, not just rectangular, which can make this quite complex in the general case.

I just released version 4.3.3. Drop Shadow has been completely rewritten for this release. It is again a lot faster than previous versions. Some other effects have minor performance improvements as well. Enjoy!

I'm sorry to hear that. It sounds like the installer did what it is supposed to do, but somehow Paint.NET doesn't load the new DLLs. I have no idea why that might be the case. Was Paint.NET running while you ran the installer? If it was, can you please try again while Paint.NET is not running? Does that help? In Paint.NET's settings window, do you see any plugin errors? If so, which ones?

What do you mean "it won't install" ? Do you get some kind of error message? If so, which one?

Hi All, I just released version 4.3 of my effects. Download here: https://www.vandermotten.be/paintdotnet. Let me know what you think. Kris.

FYI: Unfortunately, this plugin doesn't seem to work for .RC2 files produced by a Canon G11 camera.

Found another issue: I used an image of size 1920x1080. I wanted to select a rectangle from the upper left corner, of size 1600x900. So I used the Rectangle Select tool, set it to Fixed Ratio of Width 16 by Height 9. (I know I could have set it to Fixed Size, but that is not the point). I then clicked somewhere left and above the upper left corner, and dragged the mouse to cursor position 1600, 900 as indicated in the status bar. The selected rectangle was 1597x900, instead of the expected 1600x900. Note that my screen is 1920x1080, and I was working in Zoom to Window mode (81%). The status bar:

Of course, they have to be. It's drawing all pixels within a given distance of your object. Imagine a regular octagon. You want the widening (or outline) to be at the same distance everywhere, right? The same for horizontal lines, vertical lines and lines under a 45° angle? Well, that logic gives you a circle around each pixel, and that results in rounded corners.

You know, I've been thinking. She didn't need any plugin at all*, because her base image, the one she wants a shadow for, is a clean rectangle, with no transparency. All she needs to do is use three layers. Bottom one is background, top one is her image. In the middle one, draw a black rectangle and blur it. Done. *In fact, a plugin that would be handy to have is my object align plugin, to center the image and black rectangle.

In the interest of improving my effect for future versions: do I understand that the problem here is that you'd want (need) the set the blur radius to something between 75 and 100? Also, if you want the shadow to be darker, one way to get that is to use widening with bluring. As long as widening radius is less than blur radius, you will not get "unblurred" full opacity pixels in your shadow. You can think of the widening happening before the blur. And you can think of the widening as being (more or less) the same as an object outline. But of course, the blur only blurs the shadow, not the original image. The "keep original image" checkbox is present, precisely to allow this kind of scenario. But if you turn it off, the effect becomes significantly slower. If I understand your needs correctly (i.e. a blur radius of 100 pixels), I'm thinking you'd get your result faster with such a blur range in my effect and "keep original image" on, than having to do these multiple steps with duplicating the layer and separate blur. If that's true, I could increase the ranges in the next version.

Same here

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean... Can you explain, or maybe point to an image on the web that has what you want?

This is exactly what the Drop Shadow effect is made for. But you need to use layers to make it work. Fill you bottom layer with a background of your choice. In a second layer, place your image. This image now has transparent pixels around it, and the bottom layer is visible through them. Now apply the drop shadow to the top layer.

If people don't have much luck with the drop shadow or object align effects, that's usually because they try them photo's or other images without transparency. You really need transparency around "objects" for these to have any effect. If that's the case, could you be somewhat more specific about your problems?

That would indeed be rather ignorant. The installer is detecting the folder in which you installed Paint.NET, if it was indeed installed. To be honest, I didn't consider LiberKey at the time, because I simply didn't know about it. The next version of the installer will though. And before you ask: no, I don't know when it will be released yet.

It should say that only if you indeed do not have the latest version. You can download the latest version from http://users.telenet.be/krisvandermotten/Downloads/PaintDotNetEffects.html. Unzip and run the installer.

Just in case anyone has a similar problem: the installer will install only the effects you select, it's not all or nothing. I created the installer to make installation easy, inlcuding the scenario where you don't want everything. In fact, you can also rerun the installer to remove some of the effects. Just deselect the ones you don't want. The message that says "please run the installer again" is triggered by Vandermotten.PaintDotNetEffects.Installer.dll. I created this dll because a lot of people just copy the contents of the zip folder into Paint.Net's effects folder. In fact, if they also copied install.exe, this dll will pick it up and allow running it. When the installer has run correctly, that dll is removed and the message no longer appears.

You might be goind mad or not, I don't know about that But yes, the default settings have changed. I had received feedback from several people that they usually use it with both offsets set to zero. As that applies to myself as well, I changed the defaults.

Nope, as far as I know there is no reason to keep both. Feel free to remove one of them. As for Madjik's Grid Maker, maybe I should have done my homework better: I wasn't aware that it existed. It's just something I needed myself some time ago, and was very easy to create. As I had it anyway, I just included it in the download. The story is different for Object Align. The exisiting one hasn't been updated for years. I created my own version for different reasons, including speed and ease of use (which is subjective, feel free to disagree). I'm not sure whether moc426 intends to create new versions of his plugin, but I definitely intend to maintain mine at the same level as my other plugins (and that will include a version for PDN 4 when it comes out).

If you are limited to .NET 2.0, you're probably also limited to C# 2.0. In that case my source is close to useless to you, as it relies heavilly on lambdas and closures. But the techniques work on .NET 2.0, it's just that you have to write the lambdas as anonymous delegates. There were several reasons why I stopped sharing the code, the most important one being that I noticed nobody was interested in it. Most people just want to use the effects; they’re not developers, and the presence of source code only confuses them. The second reason, albeit less important, is that I wanted to stop rip-offs, people making illegal money out of my work. I believe this is also the reason why Rick stopped sharing the source for PDN itself. However, I am willing to help you of course. I will send you a PM.