maxgoof

Adding the Effects directory to the Defender exception list appears to have done the trick. My question is, is this a change in Defender, Windows, or PDN that this only appeared after the installation of the latest version of PDN?

Good! Now we're getting somewhere. How do I do that?

1) Yes, those are all the files in that directory. 2) I'm not talking about blame, I'm trying to isolate where the problem is, and again and again, responders seem to be completely ignoring the possibility of a bug in the way paint.net handles the Effects directory. 3) Sorry, no. Disabling the Effects directory does NOT prove that paint.net is not the problem, for two reasons. 3a) As I already mentioned, I have added nothing to the Effects directory for over a year. Previous versions of paint.net did not have this problem. 3b) Is it not at all possible that the way paint.net is handling the Effects directory that could be the problem? Of course it could be. Now, with regard to Windows 10 having to authenticate the dlls before allowing paint.net to load them, is there no way to tell Windows 10, "Hey, you already checked those ten times to Sunday. Stop checking them over and over."?

And BOTH of you miss the point: NONE of the plug-ins are recent. They ALL were there a year ago with the older version of paint.net. ALL of them. And I had NO problem then. Nip. Zero. Nada. Now, with this new version, it chugs. And you blame the plug-ins??????? Here's the list, btw.

BTW, just for your edification, yes, when I changed the name of the Effects directory, the program started right away. HOWEVER...NONE of the effects are dated later than 2016, the size of the effect directory is only a tad over 1Mb, and as I said, previous versions of paint.net did NOT have this problem, and all of the plug-ins worked. It only started with this latest version. So, please, stop blaming the plug-ins and look at WHY paint.net chugs with plug-ins.

Regarding the number of plug-ins: I don't know. I have added no plug-ins beyond the ones that have come with paint.NET. I seriously doubt that is the problem, though, as I have added no new plug-ins since installing the new version, and this did not occur before that update. I have re-installed the program. That did not solve the problem. I've read other threads reporting similar problems, and frankly, it's like responders are trying to find sources for the problem outside of paint.NET. As an example, some have pointed to discord. Discord is a chat program, and really should have nothing in common with paint.NET. I actually went and unloaded discord (I never cared for it anyway) and that did not solve the problem. Seriously, the problem is most likely in the latest build, since this did not occur with the previous version, and I am VERY tempted to find that version and re-installing it.

4.0.21 has a problem starting up. It goes into a "not responding" mode that could take seconds to minutes to come out of, if it comes out at all. It also has a horrible time starting when called from an image, meaning, if I double click on image.jpg it can take forever to start. This never occurred before.

It seems that, at least in Windows 7, that Paint.NET does not have a way to print "actual size". However, if you save it, then read it into MS Paint (bleh!) there is a page setup that will let you set the scaling to 100%. If you then print, it will print it actual size. Seems to me there should be a way for Paint.NET to do this directly.

It would be nice as a plug-in, yes. Seems to me that you could use the control key to center create an object. Control-shift would be for circles and squares. Shouldn't be that hard.

Is there any way to draw a circle with a given point as the center? Seem like such a simple thing to do, but all of the present ways I can think of require such precision it's almost silly. I should be able to just click the point, drag out a radius, and bingo, a circle centered on a point.

Is there a way to draw ellipses and rectangles from the center rather than from one corner to the other? In other words, you click in a spot, then drag the mouse away. Where you initally clicked would be the center of the shape, and the cursor position would be one of the four corners. This would be especially useful for placing circles by their centers.

I don't know the process when it comes to programming a plug in, but all one has to do is approximate the selection with a rectangle. You then shift each row of pixels over based on the horizontal skew angle. You then shift each column of pixels up or down based on the vertical skew angle. What is so hard about that? I mean, if MS Paint can do it...

Nope... Why not? It should be a piece of cake!

I want to attempt to place a human figure in an existing picture, and put a shadow on the floor to match the others shadows already there. My method starts out with duplicating the layer with the figure, turning it black, doing a gaussian blur on it. I want then to skew it, so it matches the plane of the floor and the angle of the other shadows. Roll/Rotate works pretty much, except the feet will no longer match up. Is there a skew plug in?