williamr

No, as I said in a previous post BMPs can support true colour and transparencies using a 4 bytes per pixel format. My need is to convert these into 1 byte per pixel form using an optimized palette. Anyway I've found out the answers in regard to the online help and the BMP conversion. I'll pop back in a few years to see how paint.net is going with these features

> If you don't mind me asking, Why must this image be in BMP format ? 1. I already have many existing images as BMPs, and I don't want to waste time converting them since they meet the existing requirements. They end up getting compressed before distribution so size savings don't matter. 2. I want to automate a screen capture process and save the resulting images, and the native windows format is CF_BITMAP which is a BMP file. So the new images I want to generate are BMPs also. Basically my experiments with paint.net were so I could avoid having to learn paint shop pro, but I realize now I need to I'm disappointed paint.net doesn't have help and I think they're making a mistake in ignoring earlier formats. Even Microsoft office makes it possible to save spreadsheets and word documents in formats up to 15 years old, and I work in a business environment where this kind of compatibility is important.

We have to agree to differ on the use of BMP files - they are the native CF_BITMAP format of the Alt-Printscreen copy and paste, they support true colour and transparencies in the new 4bpp format, and they are widely used in documentation projects. Is BMP palette conversion going to be added to paint.net? Or is it time for me to move along?

Thanks for the quick response! In regard to the help, how can I get help when I'm not online (I want to use Paint.net on a laptop which isn't always connected)? Also the downsizing of BMPs with intelligent palette creation is really useful for converting Alt+Printscreen screendumps of windows, and going to 256 color format (this reduces the size by 2/3). MS Paint can do this but it doesn't create a palette intelligently, it just uses the 6-sided color cube or something. Apart from these problems, I find paint.net an ideal half-way point between MS Paint and Paintshop pro and would like to be able to use it.

>I'm a PDN Fan! I would like to be a PDN fan, but I'm not a fan of an application which has removed the help file, and which has less bmp file functionality than MS Paint! Hopefully the authors will fix both these in the next version...

I know where the online help files are, what I needed is a downloadable help file so I can continue learning paint.net when I'm offline. Does anyone know where this is? Also I know the 24bpp to 8bpp BMP conversion in MS Paint is pretty awful (it doesn't do any color matching, it just selects the nearest color from the default palette). But Paint.net seems even worse since it can't do 24bpp to 8bpp matching at all. I wanted to use Paint.net instead of MS Paint but I do need these two

There was a help file in an earlier version but they took it out I spent some time searching this site for a copy of it but I can't find it. Any ideas?

Dear Forum I have 2 questions: 1. Is there a help file that I can run locally? I know there is web-based help but this is no use if I don't have a current internet connection. I don't mind how *big* the help file is or how big the download is, but I would like there to be one. 2. I have bitmap files (*.BMP) using true color 24bpp and I want to save them in 8bpp format with intelligent palette correction. Windows paint can sort-of do this but it uses a pre-built palette and most of the colors come out horrible. Is there a paint.net facility to do this? Thanks, Will Rayer