EwanG

I thought once upon a time you said there would be some kind of RAW support, or better support for RAW plugins in 4.0, but it's possible I just hoped you said that :-) Before: After: Thanks!

There are two things that still keep me on the Photoshop upgrade treadmill. One is working with my Canon RAW/CR2 files (which I'm hoping 4.0 will fix), and the other is my routine for turning photos into backgrounds. I'm hoping the latter is actually solved already and I just haven't found the right plugin. In Photoshop I would import an image, crop and color adjust, then do a "Poster Edges". I would then up the brightness by 10 and the contrast by 30, then apply "Cutout" and you have an image that looks like a cartoon version of your photo - perfect for a game background (at least the type I do). Is there a Paint.Net equivalent of this? Thanks in advance!

What I've ended up doing is that I will do the resize on the width to 1290 (with Keep Aspect Size checked). I will then select all, and cut. I then go to Canvas Size and set it up at 1280 by 720 (with Keep Aspect Size unchecked). I then choose to "Paste into New Layer" and "Keep Canvas Size". Then I am able to move the layer around to see what looks best, and there is enough extra on each side to make it easy to fill the full width as well. YMMV...

I'm probably missing something, but I am trying to edit a number of photos for a Ken Burns type travelogue, and that means I have to make all my color and other adjustments, and then edit to a common size (1280x720). This usually means resizing the photo which gives me the 1280, and then I need to pick which 720 of the image to include. With the rectangular select I can get close, but my mouse movement is usually too much to get exactly to 720, so I often end up having to resize again to drop/add a couple rows. Is there some way to set a selection box to be a certain size so it could then be moved up and down in the image, and then crop the image when you have selected the portion you want? Just to clarify, I know of the "Fixed Size" selection. But it is almost as impossible to get that lined up so that you get the full 1280 width as it is to get the bounding box dropped to exactly 720... Thanks in advance!

That worked much better. Thanks!

I did search for it, and the return was five threads where it is discussed, but no links to the actual plugin. Is it part of another package, or has it been withdrawn?

Yes, but there's no way to tell it to only increase the contrast on part of the picture, unless I first select using the "Magic Wand", and then you tend to get fairly visible banding...

Have some photos of outdoor murals, and the problem is that you generally have a much lighter side and a darker side. I'd like to "even" out the lighting, particularly where there is a big difference. How do y'all handle this? I was thinking of adding a layer and doing a gradient, but that seems to overdo it (plus sometimes the light isn't exactly aligned right/left).

Well, my kludge has been to move all the unedited images to one folder, then to save the edits to another folder, and then delete the unedited images. This would go a little faster if PDN could remember not only the last folder used to open, but also the last folder used to save.

OK, to explain what I want to do: I have a folder of images I want to prepare for publication. So I want to edit each image at least once, but I don't expect to do the same things to each image. IOW, I'm not looking to do a batch size conversion or such. Instead I want to select a folder (or go into a folder and select all the images in it), then bring up each image, edit it to my satisfaction, save the changes, and then go on to the next image in the folder. I suppose I could just try to open all 166 images at once, but I suspect there might be a memory issue with that... Suggestions?

Excellent idea. I will try that on the next version. Thanks!

Well, using the bevel tool didn't quite get me what I was hoping for, so instead I spent some time playing with the color palette, and using the Oil Painting tool to soften things up. The end result is at: Mysterious Girlfriend X - Test 2 Let me know what you think, and if you have any suggestions or ideas for other ways to make this work better.

Have DL'd and will try tonight Well, I'm hoping it won't take TOO much time. Seriously, the biggest problem I have is that for approximately 100 scenes per episode I have to crop, remove text balloons and text effects, trace/redraw, and color. Since I can't find anyway to automate that process, additional steps just make the whole thing take longer. Then there's adding the pics to the timeline, adding the subtitles, adding the beginning title and ending credits, mixing in music and any sound effects, and then adding a preview for the next episode. For which I get paid... well, less than the Paint.net guys

Attached image is an example of what I can produce using Paint.Net and doing some coloring of a page that I redrew as part of a "fanimation" I'm working on. Up to now I've avoided color unless the source material was colored because of the time involved with coloring. However, for this series I'd like to add a bit more to the final product. Anyway, the attached image looks better than B&W, but not a lot. I think it's because the color comes off a bit "flat". Are there any filters that could make the images "pop" a bit by adding drop shadows or shading? I'm trying NOT to have to go in by hand and map where each individual bright and dark spot is, but rather something where I could have it look at the edges, tell it which way the light is coming from, and have it do a basic recolor for me. I know how to do this by hand using multiple layers (copy the top layer, then just paint the "shadow" areas with the same color which in multiply mode will darken the area), but the end results usually are a bit stark (since you have to somehow dither the boundary), and it takes forever to do that for each image. Any suggestions for quick techniques that would help? Any other suggestions? I'm looking for something that is fairly repeatable without adding a lot more work than the current tracing, cropping, and coloring already adds. Thanks in advance!