drakaan

I must be tired too...I seem to be suffering from "can't take the time to read the whole flipping post before replying" syndrome lately :oops:

Actually, that's version 3.10 (three-dot-ten, not three-point-one-zero). 3.1 would come 9 (or less depending on missing versions :? ) minor versions earlier.

One picture is worth a thousand words (give or take):

New Paint.NET discussion noted at http://digg.com/software/Please_god_someone_compete_with_Photoshop The very first response (from YodaGuy5) was to try Paint.NET... ...and I chimed in, of course.

Thanks be to the wondrous Wayback Machine (Last page grab was from April 27...after that, jheather.com seems to have gone *poof*)

There's a new solution to your li'l problem, thanks to pyrochild... Make the circle (filled, with whatever color you like), then use pyro's new Outline Object plugin to give it a border.

Do you mean the way that the selected area becomes purplish? As far as I know, you can't (it used to bug me, too, but I don't notice it so much anymore).

I agree with myrddin on the whole "whoa" factor. It might be useful to have a "simple/advanced" layout, where a common (i.e. your favorite) set of detailed settings is preset (and not alterable) in the simple view (but basic things like direction and size can be changed), and everything is adjustable in the advanced view. That way, nobody gets scared off, and power users can tinker with it to their heart's delight.

Great plugin, PC...I can think of tons of places to use this!

Beautiful work Ben...I love your abstracts. This one looks a bit like staring up at a forming twister...care to do a tut?

In my experience, I'd have to say absolutely a real mouse (preferably optical) gives much better control, or at least speeds things up by a fair bit. I have a trackball at home, and I'm about ready to get rid of it in favor of a normal mouse (until maybe someday I can spring for a wacom tablet), so I'd shy away from a trackball.

...okay, so now I know we're talking about text. The built-in glow effect in PdN makes a halo around the glowed pixels based on the color of those pixels. Are you talking about making the text look like a light is shining through it sort of? Seriously, an example image would go a loooooong way here.

You used the wrong code...it shows up small because the link you used was for the thumbnail image (which also links to the full-size one...click on your sig, and you'll see what I mean). Go back and make sure you use the right code.

Can you describe the effect, or better yet show us an example of it?

Just a few points to consider here: And it's certainly fine that you like C++., don't let that keep you away from Visual Studio 2005. The Express Editions (C++ is one of those, by the way) are free to download and use, and while they don't come with all of the features of VS 2005 Enterprise Edition, they have at least as much going for them as VS6 (speaking as someone who has and uses both). Well, says modern Windows Programming. Granted, you can develop in-house low-level code for shaders, etc with C++ and VB6, but most of the Windows machines you're targeting these days are going to be running Windows XP or Vista, and that means the .NET Framework is likely installed and available. If you're favorite thing to do is to write low-level graphics code and try to best the OS vendor's implementation of a certain routine, then I suppose making use of the framework isn't for you, but if you just want to build something useful relatively quickly, you might want to build a few small apps that make use of it. For Paint.NET, the most accessible way to write a plugin is by using VS 2005 (or codelab, if it's not a complicated UI or effect), and accessing the exposed interfaces for plugins that Rick has provided. You can do that in whatever .NET language you like. I'd say that learning a second (or third, or fourth) programming language typically teaches you more, since you get to see how easily certain programming problems are solved with the various languages. VB used to be my programming language of choice because I made a lot of classic ASP web pages. Perl came in to the picture because of the fact that I hate to do something over and over again if I can automate it. Java I learned because of necessity, since I wanted to create code that ran equally well (or badly, I'm not that good at Java yet) on a variety of platforms with minimal work. C grew out of getting familiar with various *NIX shells. C# is new to me, but it has it's advantages. I'd just hate to see you say you're going to wait to learn it because you won't learn as much...it ain't necessarily so.

I plan on more than that, eventually (draggable dividers on a thumbnail image)...I definitely need to read that article, though. Final goal is a basic image splitter for cutting images up to use in web forms. You'll have a choice of one or two horizontal or vertical dividers and their placement on the image...maybe a "make symmetrical" button, too.

Woohoo! Figured it out! void Render(Surface dst, Surface src, Rectangle rect) { PdnRegion selectionRegion = EnvironmentParameters.GetSelection(src.Bounds); // Delete any of these lines you don't need Rectangle selection = this.EnvironmentParameters.GetSelection(src.Bounds).GetBoundsInt(); int offsetx = 0; int V1 = 10; int H1 = 10; int spacing = 10; for (int y = rect.Top; y < rect.Bottom; ++y) { for (int x = rect.Left; x < rect.Right; ++x) { if (x > rect.Left + V1) { offsetx = spacing; } else { offsetx = 0; } if (x > rect.Left + offsetx) { if (x > rect.Left + (offsetx * 2)) { dst[x, y] = src[x - offsetx, y]; } else { ColorBgra dpix = src[x - offsetx, y]; dpix.A = 0; dst[x,y] = dpix; } } } } } Learned a few things, too...

Okay...modified it a bit. Now I see copied pixels, but I guess I have to clear the source pixels for the locations where I moved them? EDIT: Now it's clipping correctly, I just don't know how to make the right pixels transparent... void Render(Surface dst, Surface src, Rectangle rect) { PdnRegion selectionRegion = EnvironmentParameters.GetSelection(src.Bounds); // Delete any of these lines you don't need Rectangle selection = this.EnvironmentParameters.GetSelection(src.Bounds).GetBoundsInt(); int offsetx = 0; int V1 = 10; int H1 = 10; int spacing = 10; for (int y = rect.Top; y < rect.Bottom; ++y) { for (int x = rect.Left; x < rect.Right; ++x) { if (x > rect.Left + V1) { offsetx = spacing; } else { offsetx = 0; } if (x > rect.Left + offsetx) { if (x > rect.Left + (offsetx * 2)) { dst[x, y] = src[x - offsetx, y]; } else { ColorBgra CurrentPixel = src[x,y]; // TODO: Add pixel processing code here // Access RGBA values this way, for example: CurrentPixel.R = 0; CurrentPixel.G = 0; CurrentPixel.B = 0; CurrentPixel.A = 0; } } } } }

Sure...it's a simple idea... Before: After: Iterating over the destination canvas sounded counterintuitive to me when I read it, but after thinking about it, I believe I grok it in fullness. I should be using the current X and Y for the destination surface and for that point, set the pixel's values according to my desired value based on calculations of the source surface's geometry (instead of bass-ackwards, like I just attempted to do). Does that mean that effects can never alter pixels outside of the selection? It seems like an obvious question, but I can think of some situations where having the selection not be a mask for the effect would be handy.

Hi all, I'm trying (unsuccessfully, so far) to use codelab to create a plugin that splits an image in two. Just one horizontal split. The code I have so far is: void Render(Surface dst, Surface src, Rectangle rect) { PdnRegion selectionRegion = EnvironmentParameters.GetSelection(src.Bounds); // Delete any of these lines you don't need Rectangle selection = this.EnvironmentParameters.GetSelection(src.Bounds).GetBoundsInt(); int offsetx = 0; int V1 = 10; int H1 = 10; int spacing = 10; for (int y = rect.Bottom; y > rect.Top; --y) { for (int x = rect.Right; x > rect.Left; --x) { if (x > rect.Left + V1) { offsetx = spacing * 2; } else { offsetx = 0; } if (x < rect.Right - offsetx) { dst[x + offsetx, y] = src[x, y]; } } } } I had some errors with x being beyond the bounds of the selection which seem handled, but there's no obvious movement of the ol' pixels. Can somebody hit me with a clue-by-four?

...or, if you mean "make a copy of a layer", it's called "duplicate layer"...little icon at the bottom of the layers window.

But it's not in a separate layer. I don't like a lot of layers when I only type one text down. Thanks. Any plugin or effect that does what you want will end up working exactly like the rectangle selection tool (plus layers). You might consider using a different tool for laying out text like that, and then once you have things where you want them, using Paint.NET for whatever photo manipulation you want to do. I'd recommend Inkscape for the type of thing you seem to be talking about. It can export finished drawings (or portions of them) to .png, which is a native format for Paint.NET.

GIMP flares look better anyway...sorry I dropped the ball on posting the illustrator ones (work and kids intervened)

Here's a quick overview of the modes that were useful: Top-to-bottom, they are: Multiply (full opacity) Overlay + duplicated layer mode normal (128 opacity) Normal (128 Opacity) Color Burn (full opacity) Darken (full opacity) I think color burn gives the best result for duplicating a highlighter, but I haven't tried it on anything other than black and white images yet. Methinks there needs to be a writeup on blending modes (with examples)

Well, I thought so too, but if you try that (overlay) on black text against a white background, it only colors the antialiased pixels that make a halo around the text. Overlay was my initial thought, but I figured I'd try it to be sure, and multiply was the one of the two that worked as expected.