007 Nab

Sorry Kemaru, my vote goes to Pipp. I must say, Darkshock also did a great job on his sig. Great job Pipp, your sig is nice and clear - not over contrasted - and I like the use of effects. You've put a nice emphasis on the focal, and it's overall composed well.

What I mean by that is that the sticks themselves have a certain perspective (they're not just 2D flat), so you have to take that into account when drawing over them with the lightsabers. If you draw the lighsaber so that the side closest to the camera is wider than the one farthest, you will get an added touch of realism. I hope you know what I mean - all I was saying was that you need to consider the perspective of the sword in relation to the camera. Oh, and Crimson's advice goes well too - added lights will definitely make the manips look even better.

You're welcome. The baby conveys emotion very well, I can just see it in its eyes. Great job on that too

Nice job on the horns, are they stock images, or did you create them yourself? Cool first picture, I like photo manipulations a lot. Welcome to the Paint.NET forum

Good technique - I like how yo used blurring and contrast to anti-alias the drop's edges. That's just smart I can see some good use for that method.

I would work on having a more defined focal point in your signature. There is no place where your eye goes to automatically when you first look at it. If you want the focal to be the text, I would move it using the rule of thirds. If you want the focal point in your signature to be a specific part of the splatter, I would accent the part over the others, toning everything else down reducing contrast in color and brightness. Try to focus more on a color scheme as well, using complementary colors. Also, try to implement some depth, which could really do well in this specific signature - simply make some of the splatters less visible or vary them in sharpness / blurriness. This would help with realism and give the viewer a sense of space and light play when they look at your signature. Right now your sig is off to a good start, but it's just that - a start - you can build up from where you've started, and fulfill its potential. [/end lots of writing]

Fantastic job on the shading and eyes - I can see you put a lot of detail in the eyes specifically. This is such a great improvement- the lines are all clearly defined and everything is sharp and concise, like it's meant to be there (I've found that often people will be experimenting different methods on one piece, and it sometimes results in a blurry mess). Great... Baby! It's a wonderful piece, Helen. I assume you used a reference picture? Was it done entirely in Paint.NET?

Saw it Kind of a cool thing to stick in the corner =P

Very nice plugin! Thank you for sharing it!

I meant the actual "Planets Exploding" picture - with the twist effect. That one's the one I like Your other is good too, you followed the tutorial well.

Is the moon a stock, or did you create it yourself? Is the taskbar supposed to be there? Cool picture, I like it.

I like your Planet Exploding picture - it's original and you manipulated given Paint.NET effects well - good job You're off to a good start! Looking forward to more stuff from you!

Great use of plugins! The wire frame effect (can't remember the name of the plugin - pretty sure it's by Madjik) does a great job of adding to the sense of shape, texture, and lighting. I think the sun should be in this kind of vector-ish style as well, instead of being blurred as it is - maybe running the Lightrays plugin and then the wire frame on it would get a good result. Neat style, I like this!

LFC, great job on the Logo - though the stem at the top seems a bit out of perspective (might just be me) - I think it needs to be rotated further down the plane. Can't wait or the finished piece!

_____ Pretty cool wallpaper, I like the style and the effects you used - well done overall. _____ Jyro - very cool sig. It conveys a lot of emotion - I feel like the man with the mask is being hunted down - stalked - Nice use of colors and effects to portray a feeling. Excellent piece of work overall.

I like your force levitation, lightning, and latest lightsaber one. Great job overall man, you're definitely improving. One suggestion though - I would put more emphasis on perspective with the lightsabers - sometimes they aren't perfectly parallel to the camera in your pics and it makes theme look like miniatures. If instead you treated them like a flat plane, you could get better perspective out of the edited versions. Also, have you tried any animation? I was playing around with it a little while back - and while it's super tedious and long (even at just 25 frames per second) you can get some awesome outcomes.

Do you just mean its Opacity? This can be viewed by double clicking the layer itself, accessing the Layer Properties menu. EDIT: And in case you're into hotkeys, F4 would do the trick as well

Looks kind of like Pop Art, even though it's still realistic - like an Always Sunny in Philadelphia commercial Cool effect.

yy10, I can see some definite improvement between these sigs and even just last week's stuff. Good job man, you're having some excellent progress.

Is this the tutorial you looked at? You can learn how to download and install the plugins required with the link APShredder gave you. However, in this tutorial, you don't need to necessarily have a plugin to achieve the effect, you can achieve the same drop shadow effect by: 1. Duplicate the layer you want to have a shadow under 2. Make this new layer black (using the silhouette plugin or Curves) 3. Gaussian blur this black layer as much as you need it 4. Move the blurred black layer underneath your original image.

No problem, glad I could help, and welcome to the Paint.NET community

Most of these lighting effects can be created by hand using the paintbrush, blurs, and then layer blend modes. For the pic with the man on the couch, you can paintbrush like I said, and then run the glow effect, and you should be able to achieve a close outcome. Hope I was of some help, Nabster

Twist, the light on both your render and background is coming from the top of the sig, not the bottom or sides. I would get some kind of darkness on the bottom of the sig, underneath his face - using clouds or some kind of blur, and then setting it to Multiply or Darken.

Regarding your first suggestion, there is already an alternative solution called ScriptLab. It let's you automate a series of effects, which, if I understood correctly, is what you are trying to achieve. As to your other requests, I believe, according to here, that additional selection tools will be coming to Paint.NET in the future.

This plugin definitely has great potential - I remember messing with it about a year back, and there are some great text effects to be achieved from it.