Toli

Please take a brief look at my thread "About a "Selective blur / average" Plugin" While developing the plugin, I changed the concept a little, so now the plugin has no UI and works like that: 1. You select an area of similar color (with the Magic Wand for best results) 2. Click Effects.Blurs.Smooth That's all! The Selected Area is Smoothed internally, as if there were no surroundings. This is especially useful in my opinion when doing sprites. Example: Let's consider this sprite: Some smoothing seems appropriate. If we try Blur... The gray and red interfere with each other. If we move the gray area to another layer, it will blend with the transparency around it. Its grey areas would need some smoothing. The red area needs it too. Only separately. So, select the grey areas, click Smooth, then select the red area and click Smooth again. Done! You can get this and other plugins plus the source code from HERE Toli Cuturicu

Please check the new binary and source code at the beggining of the thread. I think these are almost final, because I am not going to work at this plugin in the near future unless serios bugs / drawbacks are found. I made another plugin, Smooth, check that one too, please.

Thank you for your appreciation. Less CPU and Memory overhead is an old habit of mine, from the era when CPU frequency was around 0.87 MHz, bandwidth was 8 bits and RAM 64 KB... By the way, do you think that I should make a little tutorial about how to make a faster plugin or something? (I am a professor too, not only a programmer)

Thanks. I use Paint.NET 3.10. I tried Surface Blur and I do not understand well how it works. I need some explanation. Maybe Ed could lighten me up a little. Anyway it does seem somehow appropriate. Maybe I should only refine it a little instead programming a new one from scratch.

I don't have the slightest idea what "surface blur" means. There is no post with this title in Plugins forum.

... And which is the right Submenu? "Blurs", isn't it?

Sorry, this will just not do it. I tried. It will add transparency to the edges, or whatever color the background may be. [attachment=0]PortLeftLayer.png[/attachment]

I would very much like such a Plugin and I am ready to start programming it. However, I do not want to duplicate some other programmer's work. So I ask the question here first. Is there anything like this around? Let me be a little more specific: [attachment=0]PortLeft.png[/attachment] This is a Supaplex Port (a sprite). See that the grey areas are not very smooth. If I smooth them using a blur (e.g. Gaussian Blur, Radius = 1), some red will get into the first column of grey pixels adjeacent to the red pixels. My plugin should only blur / average if the color difference is not greater than a specified value. What do you think? Is it worth coding that? Thank you for any feedback Toli Cuturicu

This will be neither easy nor straightforward. However, I might implement it time available and / or more people complaining about it. The difference is not only about two missing buttons, but the fact that now all the options are on Buttons, not RadioButtons anymore. The best solution would probably be to use two different forms and load whichever appropriate at runtime (the user's choice, remembered in the Ini File)

Is it possible to change the canvas size from within a plugin? What about the selection size / location? Thanks for reading and answering this post.

Reply to Pantaleao. Thank you for your feedback. I program since 1982, so I am quite old in the branch too! Usually, you are right. However, the changes in the look and feel are marginal and in the functionality are none. Taking into the consideration the gain in usability, I suppose that the users will be happy. If not and should I receive more negative feedback, it wouldn't be so difficult to revert to the initial UI.

Yes. I think that every piece of software, however small, should take into consideration some "small" things like accesibility, keyboard control, globalization, user settings remember and so on.

I updated it again! Look at the beggining of the thread. 1. Now it remembers the last choice. 2. The OK and Cancel Buttons are gone. "None" is now Cancel and all the others are OK. The preview is automated on Button_MouseHover and Button_Enter. This way, you save a click! 3. Try to right-click! You'll see the UI change. Use the UI you like from three choices. The plugin will remember it too. Comments?

I added the new version of my plugin and also the source code. You can find both of them at the beggining of the thread. Feel free to ask questions about or to criticize the source code (or binary) Toli Cuturicu

> Perhaps emulate the built-in Rotate when no selection is active - i.e. rotate the entire canvas I am not sure I am able to do that (actually change the Dimensions of the Canvas). > and when there is one active still rotate what is in the selection within the selection. What do you think? > See how it was rotated within the selection? Therefore this would enable all the functions afforded to us available > all the time. Is something like my suggestion feasible? This would be feasible, but will take some time, because I have some other work to do right now.

> Could you use a thumbnail of the current picture instead of a Paint.NET icon? > Just throwing it here... Sorry, I don't think this would be feasable. 1. Thumbnail of what? The picture? The selection? The Selection Bounds? 2. If it does not have Transparency near the edges it will not look nice on a Button. 3. You see the Effect on the fly on the Canvas anyway. 4. I do not have an algorhythm to save a part of an Image as a *.png / I don't know how to do it. 5. What about the Disabled Buttons. They should display something, shouldn't they?

> Toli, > Fantastic job! I really like the UI how it shows what the result will be with the buttons. This plugin is essential and will > especially be easy to use for newer users. > Keep up the great work. > Dave Thank you for your compliments. Everybody who knows my programs appreciates especially the UI. I will keep coding, of course.

> Nice, and please put it in "Distort". > Thanks. Thank you too. I am not sure if my plugin performs any distorsion at all. In my point of view, the result is either identical or enantiomorphic with the original, so it is tehnically not distorted. But I will take it into consideration further.

> Great! > I'm going to replace my flip version by this plugin! Thank you. I will try to make it better. > Source? I would like to see how to remember the position! > Thanks! I feel quite ashamed of releasing the source code, because everybody will then see my mistakes and bad coding practises. If you think I will not make a fool of myself, probably I will post it after editing it a bit for clarity. The position is remembered in an *.ini file created in the same directory. Open it with a text editor and look at it. Form.Left and Form.Top are written there at Form.FormClosing and read from there at Form.Load. The whole Ini File stuff is wrapped by me in a class IniFile, which I use in many of my projects. It is extremely large, so I stripped all the unnecessary code out of it and added the remaining to this project.

The Default and Cancel Buttons were not properly set. This was fixed. The UI now remembers its position. I also shrunk the UI a little.

Instead of doing nothing, the Buttons that work only when the Selection is Square, are disabled otherwise. I replaced the original with this update. You can find it at the begining of the post.

The examples are on the Buttons of the Plugin itself. Take a look...

Thank you very much. I did not know about the Effects API forum. I will post related questions there from now on.

Sorry, that was not what I wanted. Thank you anyway. I just wanted to find out, for example, if: 1. Is anything selected? 2. Is the selection Freeform / Rectangle / Square?

It is straightforward to get the Selection and its Bounding Rectangle in the Effect.Render(...) Method. However, I need it way before the Render Method executes, i.e. in the Effect Constructor, because I want to make use of it in the Effect UI (to disable some Controls if the Selection is not Rectangular, not Square and so on). Please try to help me.