Curmudgeon

Looks like you blurred yours after you lowered the opacity. Instead of blurring it, you could select the ellipse area, and then use a linear or radial gradient (white as primary, and transparent color as secondary) over it, similar to the orb tutorials.

definitely cool bb00 first thing I thought of was an unearthed sleigh bell... yes, I said it, a sleigh bell...but of course I'm tired and need to get some sleep

could use this tutorial http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2492 and fade out a person's face and fade in the demon's face using opacity of the layers

Here's what I would use: http://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/en/RecolorTool.html

You mean coming from the top? If so, on a new layer above the picture, do a white filled ellipse, and lower the opacity of the layer to suit your taste.

Maybe this might spark some ideas. On the left is your "before" picture; on the right is the "after" picture. Both are cropped to the same dimensions. For the after picture, I used Bulge with a negative number (in this case -37) centered over your midsection. Then used Smudge to drag the shirt down over the shadow created by the belly, to make it look like the belly doesn't stick out so much.

when I want to make more realistic clouds, I still rely on using the Clouds plugin (not the one found under Effects>Render>Clouds) it has lots of different options to set for it.

Read this post. It details a workaround. http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=22863&p=146120#p146120

Literally, this one took me less than 3 minutes...I'm sure you could make it as nice as you wanted in no time. In it, I drew a line on a new layer, and used the waves plugin in to give it the rippled edge, then used outline on it. Duplicated the layer and flipped it horizontal, and merged it with the first lines layer. Then magic wand selected the top and bottom, inverted the selection, and rendered diagonal lines at 0° in a couple colors, and moved those behind the wavy lines (the helix shape)

what the heck? so where does the request fall in line? what are you requesting?

It's a bit of a "lost in translation" issue as DRILL is from Russia, and they have a different expressions. And your "stop being so picky" would've been better placed 6 months ago when he said it.

not necessarily...if the render is on a black background, and the render itself has any black in it the same hue, the contiguous magic wand will select that as well.

I still thought the sparkles plugin would be beneficial, so I tried a quick example using sparkles, and the result is below.

Then you could use layers, along with Curves, gradients or anything else you're accompanied to, and with blending modes you could create many colors.

or you could use adjustments > invert colors :InvertColors:

You could try a couple things... Using the Sparkles plugin set to a high number of sparkles with large radius (not flares) or Perhaps the Light Rays plugin and a radial gradient combination. Sparkles and Light Rays are both in the Madjik-all pack of plugins

By using the following tutorial, it is pretty easy. http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4841&st=0&sk=t&sd=a Also, any questions that may arise are probably answered within that tutorial's replies (all 11 pages of them).

Found by using search... http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4855&st=0&sk=t&sd=a#p43818

For someone that has used Paint.NET for "quite a while now" I'd think you'd now about the rounded rectangle tool. Make a rounded rectangle on a new layer (with AA disabled) so it encompasses the image you're trying to capture. Magic wand the inside of the rounded rectangle, invert selection, and delete that portion from the background. Then run Basic Antialias on the cut out portion you just created and delete the layer with the rounded rectangle. Voilà.

Just suggest it as a collaboration. IMHO there are far too many contests already. Makes it hard to read the forum skipping over the threads.

assuming you mean renders which are already on a transparent background, you'd simply paste each one onto it's own new layer, and then position them and merge them down onto one layer.

If you're registered there, clicking on that image takes you to the image which is rendered on a transparent background. Otherwise, you'll need to do like Ash says and actually cut the image out.

Good thing it wasn't a snake

you can do a search for 3d text or something similar...there are many text tutorials here

@ AUDS, please reread the rules, especially #3 & #5... and @ jlstx3500: What type of effects are you trying to do? Paint.NET can do certain things with text, but it would be nice to see a picture so we could suggest something better, rather than suggesting other software.