Curmudgeon

There is one in the Galleria (first page), and below is their description how they made it. That one was easy to make. First make a basic noise starfield on Background layer (their are oodles of tutorials). Then on a new layer, do Tom's Fire tutorial with a radial gradient instead of a linear one. Change blend mode to additive. Use Color Balance to add color, and done. I did a little bit more on lone nebula though. I believe I duplicated the layer, ran Sepia, and then did a transparent gradient on it.

I hope not

by chance are you running dual monitors?

sounds like they have an image that already has text on it

if you go to http://www.dafont.com you should see that there is a whole category of fonts called "Graffiti" with over 100 different fonts to choose from they would be a good starting point for something interesting

you say "it's a pretty big picture so it renders a little slow". the big thing slowing it down to render is that you had the AA box set to 5. do all your work with the AA box off, and then turn it on when you're ready to render the final product...a lot faster...and your video card would appreciate it

you need to be a little more specific... Which reflection plugin did you download as there are a few of them to choose from?

You sure you searched? there were several complaints about it not working right after the update... Which is why BoltBait updated the plugin here: http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2498

using feather in conjunction with soft brushes would help out the harsh edges check out this tutorial for details: http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=22096&st=0&sk=t&sd=a#p131669

that's why it was only tossed out as an idea. no worries...I was hoping that something like the Illuminate plugin or the bevel selection could accomplish it. I'll just continue to do it the old way with gradients Thanks for the quick reply, and you too Oma, for your reply

BoltBait, I'm lovin' the Bevel Selection plugin so far, as it's making my life easier in some projects I'm doing. Couple ideas I'd like to toss out to see if they might be possible: Would it be possible to have an angle chooser, to simulate a light source from another direction? Would it be possible to add a transparency to the shadow/highlight colors for the start of the color? For the transparency issue, I simulated it by doing my selection on one layer and running the bevel on a separate layer and then adjusting the opacity of the new layer, or blend modes. The angle chooser I think would be tougher to come up with as it would have to do the bevel shadow and highlight in different areas depending on the angle chosen. Just ideas I thought about and was wondering about...

yep, pretty awesome job BB, keep up the good work

Easiest way to get rid of the black would be to open the file in Paint.NET and then use the Alpha Mask plugin which would turn the black to transparent. (After the background in transparent, save it as a file which preserves the transparency, such as .gif, .tga or .png) Then you could resize it using image>resize

well, you could get a faster computer and hard drive...or get rid of some of the brushes

A) images saved as .jpg files can't preserve transparency if you opened up your .jpg and saved it as a .gif that would do no good C) Start over, and save as a .gif or .png or .tga from the start. If you save it as a .gif image, you may have to adjust the transparency threshold as well to preserve the transparency

I just use the snipping tool on Vista to save a copy of something I think I might need to use at a later date

I can think of no good reason for there to be one, when one has the capability of using blending modes. There's infinite possibilities when you use blending modes...you can duplicate the same layer a number of times, and use a different blend mode on each for some spectacular results. But if you think it would be a good idea, then feel free to write one...someone else might agree with you.

use your brush on a new (blank) layer, then use layer opacity & the blending modes (multiply, additive, overlay, etc.) to add the subtle shading you desire

wow, that's a lot to ask for one post, however, this link might help with most of them: http://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/en/index.html

what I thought he meant was something like the focal point blur If so, Focal Point can be found here: http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=22919&hilit=focal+point

you'd have to separate the .gif file into it's separate frames with an external program (I typically use http://www.gifworks.com) then add the desired text to each frame, and resave all the separate frames as .gif files. Then create your .gif with another program such as UnFREEz

If you want the boxes at the bottom, you could use image>canvas size (with secondary color set to the color you wanted the caption box to be), add a certain amount to the height of each photo, with your image anchor position set to top middle

sounds like a job for the Conditional Hue/Saturation plugin found here ==>http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1102&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=conditional#p4570

choose a color for text click "more" in color window set Transparency - Alpha to 0 write your text Thanks BB, I did indeed forget it

no, I replied to your PM already