Thanks for the feedback. I have a screenshot program which copies the image to the clipboard. I was looking for a way to start paint.net, paste the image from the clipboard into the new instance, and then crop to selection (ctrl+shift+x). If I could automate these commands, I could set a windows hotkey a batch file to do something like:
paintnet.exe /keypress ctrl+v /keypress y /keypress ctrl+shift+x
Then I could quickly make my changes and move on. no big deal, I just like to automate things