amigaboy

understood and agree, in typing text I didn't necessarily 'select' it, true - let me restate it a different way: 1) when I actively 'do' something in Paint.net (e.g. importing a file into my overall image, typing text on the image, etc.) that is the 'active item' i'm doing something with at the time; 2) if I have an image already flattened with a number of different things someone gives me, by contrast, and I want to select the text in it (vs. say the background image, etc.) I can 'select' it using the Magic Wand tool; 3) essentially my point is, if you are typing text in, that (to me) isn't hugely different than using rectangle select to pick the text someone else may have already flattened into the image - thus when you are using the text tool, and you have that little square cursor open in the lower right below the text you type (believe it helps you resize it while the text is still 'active') - that should be flippable in the same way as just using rectangle-select, circle-select, etc.? does this make better sense? As noted before, pretty sure the program doesn't treat them in the same way (and probably doesn't consider active use of the text tool as 'selecting' anything) but to me in practice they are effectively the same - I still want to treat the 'word' like any other brush and be able to mess around with it, mirror it, etc. In Aura (old Newtek video/painting tool that has a more idosyncratic interface but many of these types of cool tweaky tools) a brush is a brush - you can create one based on text, by rectangle-selecting, etc. but it doesn't put it on the canvas until you left-click, so the brush stays in the active state and you manipulate it, THEN put it on the canvas. My analogy to Paint.NET is when you import an image from something else and then move it around the base layer and then hit enter or escape to stick it in place, flattening it in later when you save the overall combined image? I'm not an expert in Paint.NET by any means but find it's pretty easy to use and discover cool stuff about it all the time.... amigaboy

this works good but, it doesn't seem to handle text 'selection' without several other external clicks. That is, if you were using a symbol font, or wanted to flip upside down/backwards some text, instead of typing it and then simply selecting the flip effect (that doesn't work - it flips the whole image) you have to type your text, then select it with the rectangle select or similar, *then* flip the text - if you want to move it after, you then pick it with magic wand and use either Move tool. probably means that typing text is a different sort of 'select' than using rectangle, circle or magic wand 'select', no? amigaboy