Kat

Sorry for asking, it's just a vocab thing: What does MSC stand for? What's its meaning? :oops:

Oh, thank you so much, ncfan! That's gonna be very helpful! Yes I found that earlier, but my kids speak German... Looking forward to getting started with the kids

I came to Paint.Net for (nearly) exactly the same reasons as Speckles. The only difference is that my little students are 9-10; so the age range is narrower. What I have to do is create an ongoing afternoon workshop for those kids who participate in all-day schooling, once a week, each 60 minutes long, either for the whole schoolyear or maybe half, I don't know exactly how they will plan it. BoltBait, reading what you did with the kids gave me an idea --- and at the same time the idea that I am not at all fit to teach them these things. (Your curriculum sounds so "scientific", oh dear, I couldn't do all that myself, let alone teach it! *lol*) Of course, I can work around the things I haven't mastered yet in PDN, there's enough basic stuff for them to understand first. Using their own pictures is a great idea, and it comes in handy that our school possesses one (in figures: 1) digital camera which we can then use for all those who have no own digital photo. I have the same scrupulosity about using the Google Image Search with these young kids ... in another computer course I did, I had them search for Dolphins on the net.... and you wouldn't believe that even with an innocent word like "Delfin" or "Delphin" how many sleezy photos would also come up. :x And then, of course, I am also actively looking up the tut section in order to find tuts which are easy enough for me to keep in mind. *lol - getting older requires some simplification* Would you be able to point out some simple, basic tuts for me to look into? ~~~~~ During my current summer break, PDN will be installed on all the computers in our computer lab (13 pieces), but just the basic, most recent version.... Is it recommendable that I go ahead and also install some plug-ins right away, or should I wait till the kids will have made a little progress and have become acquainted enough with the program? Myself, I installed your plugin pack, along with the pyrochild effects and also downloaded Madjik's pack, but haven't installed it yet, as I was unsure if I needed the setup as well. This has been clarified for me, and I also will install this pack one of these days. Do you think we could use them with the beginner's course right away? (If so, I will have to teach them how to download [& maybe install] the plugins, as it would take me forever to do this on 13 computers all on my own... *lol*) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And my last question is: Have you already written up and/or posted a tut about how you do the photo"chops" ? I am fascinated by the pic I saw in your Pictorium thread, and would love to learn how to do that!

I nearly thought so - and perfect equilibrum would be juuuusssst boooring! I think something like a really tiny, nice, little thing could do the job. (Not even necessarily an object, just make that boring black go away please *lol*). Your most recent version is very nice already. (But then, I constantly surf with 2 different computers, sometimes on my notebook and now on the normal desktop -- and here on the big one the monitor is lightyears better, because quite new, whereas the notebook is 4+ years old, and of course the whole hardware not nearly as neat as the new one, so sometimes I don't see things as well from there.) Anyway, I am confident you will come up with something as amazing as what you did till now. Looking forward to it.

I like it very much. Ronaldinho is a good subject anyway...

@TopHatslash While I can't give you any techical advice and am no artist either, I would only want to inspire you to think about the right side of your sig. It's a bit "empty" and so the whole sig is out of equlibrum/balance -just for MY taste. Others may see it differently. The left side is fantastic, and optically, it has a "heavy weight" - try something to balance that weight a bit. Just my 2 pence.

@ dextras I like it - though these very small images get so close to being invisible when there's so much darkness involved. (At least for MY eyes, I don't know how others see it.) However, I like the concept of your pic and how you designed the center.

The central point of my question was: As I'm not exacly sure what you mean to say with your answer (Do I have to go different way than the one I did with the other plugins which were just moved from folder x to folder y?), I'd rather get the setup.zip and see what happens. But thanks anyway!

I find the whole forum extremely helpful, for that matter. @sabrown: Beginner's questions would be kind of basic things like e.g. "How do I do a cutout?" or like recently. "Help with layers" -- things like that. Whereas questions about plug-ins, effects or like when someone wants to do (or has gotten stuck in) a more complex project this type of question would be intermediate or expert... I think that generally, people have a good feeling of self evaluation on where they stand in using a program, so one could leave it up to them more or less. I also understand the structure which is given in here, as well as the thoughts behind it. My intention was not at all to get rid of this structure, but to kind of expand it, like in the tut section, one could easily decide if a tut is good for "bloody beginners" or not... or if it is a rather complex thing where you'll have to use a lot of plug-ins, know your way around effects (and what to do about it if s.th. doesn't come out the way it should). I thought this could be tremendously helpful for ALL people present here. And it would make browsing in here (without asking too much) a lot easier - thus lifting a bit the burden off the mod's shoulders. That was my idea behind it. I know how unnerving it gets when the 127th new user within a few months asks the same question that has been answered 115 times before --- so, a structured collection of questions could also be quite helpful. Maybe first ask the Q in "General Discussions" and then a mod can easily move the thread to the right sub-forum, and there it can blossom. Well, these were just outlines of some vague imagination/vision I had.

One question from a n00b: Just downloaded Madjik's Effects.zip ... and is it mandatory that I also download the setup.zip? Don't they go just into the effects and file types folders? (Sorry if it's the wrong place... I looked up the open zip file and there is no readme there, so I'm a bit insecure now what to do.)

Thanks eraser! I really feel like a baby (maybe a toddler) in a world full of vintage professionals. But that only goes for the expertise, otherwise I guess I could be one or the other user's granny...

Please don't beat or bite me ... I am still a noob, but I read rather attentively, and every so often I come across a closed thread or one with a link to a tut because the question has been asked before. I fully understand the need to keep the forum up-to-date and in a good structure, and as a complete noob, sometimes not even capable to think of the right search word(s), I also see why people ask the same question several times over time. So it just came to my mind, if it wasn't feasible and worthwhile to try and restructure the forum in a way that ppl (like me) would be able to search for their needed info in the right section to begin with, thus over time avoiding double and triple threads on the same question. (I manage a forum myself, so I DO know how much work is behind all this, even if ours is not half as big and broad as yours - it still costs a lot of input from a lot of people to keep everything running smoothly and up to date!) My idea is to maybe create sub-forums in this "General Discussion" forum as well as in the "Tutorial" forums, giving them names like "Basics" (or: beginners), "intermediate" and "expert" according to the nature of the questions/tuts. Maybe that would even be worthwhile doing with the Pictorium though the immediate need for it seems of a lesser priority. I know that with 130 pages of thread titles alone this would require a lot of extra work, but the prospect might be that, once you have done this work, your workload might get lighter afterwards. I really feel for you, mods and admins, so bear with me, if I'm annoying you with this idea. It's just ... well... well-meant, so to speak. Thanks for the great job you all are doing here!

The other day, I tried to follow that tut you linked to. But always at the same point in my picture, I failed to put the line "tidily" around the corner ... when it was only a slight bending still heading in the same direction, it was no problem, but when I had to change direction (let's say from going to the right and upward to going to the right and downward) the last nub would just ever dislocate itself, thus drawing the line across the part of the picture which I wanted to maintain. I couldn't get the nub to stay in place... so for the time being I gave up on this tut. I used the mouse first, and later switched to using the HyperPen which would not be of help at all. (But then, I'm not a graphics freak, and I definitely lack practise, that's true. Nonetheless I'd be very grateful for some helpful comments.) Thanks in advance for your ever lasting patience with me. If I'm becoming a nuisance, please tell me so, and I'll try my best to walk alone.... just don't know how far I'll get...

So I tried to work a bit on the picture level - still with just the basic PDN program, no plug-ins as of yet. One of these days I will DL some of the important ones, I swear. I am confident enough now that I can handle it. Now anyway, here are some variations: Just variations of the kind I like... playing around with colors, blur and so on. In the 2nd picture I tried out what "curves" would do... that's quite incontrollable to me though... *hehe*

That's one of the features I used most of all features in PS, and I've been looking around all day here in order to find something like that. My main problem was I didn't know the English terms to be used (bevel/emboss) ... but now have a nice PS translation website (German -> English) which I saved to my favourites. Hope it makes my future requests clearer. And YES ... that feature is the one I miss most in PDN.

Thanks! It nearly seems sensible to me if I downloaded PDN on another computer and set the language to English, so I needn't ask those stupid questions all the time... I had no idea that it was related to a term used within the program!!! :oops:

Thanks Oma, for this very good hint, I will try this out immediately next time I have to do this!! Ash: Guess what I've been doing all the time? Reading, reading, reading... but I must admit, I never pressed the F1 button yet, I promise I will try this one as well as soon as I get stuck in working at something! Thanks to all of you - you are so helpful people! *looking for an applause smiley*

Myrddin, thanks for the wealth of hints you are providing us newcomers with! Indeed I was looking into how I could make my signature "less flat" by working out the edge to a ..."more elevated" design .. guess you know what I mean, that's what in PS I used to do via the level manager -> properties. So there is also something in there for me... GREAT! I start to love PDN more every minute I busy myself with it! (And the best thing is: I already have an idea as to how -as a newcomer myself- I can go about building up my computer workshop in school in the afternoons after the summer break. Btw. THIS is the reason why I landed here: our school wouldn't really have had the money to buy a full load of PS licenses for the computer classroom, so our IT counsellor pointed out that PDN exists. Before last Wednesday, I had had no idea about it!) Yep, I LOVE PDN - though I don't even know how to use it properly (when it comes to the more refined appliances...) *lol*

Reading your title, I don't have the slightest idea what you mean by "exclusion layer mode". What is it? :idea:

Personally, I like the idea. There are 100s of shapes available in photoshop, many available as plug-ins and download packages. Maybe for PDN there are also some relevant plug-ins? I am not yet familiar enough with PDN, so I don't know about the plug-ins. I just downloaded PDN last Wednesday night and have been making my very first steps with the program "as is" till now. I thought once I learned the basic routines, it's still time to care for more.

Wouldn't the word "shapes" define better what you want? (Just a suggestion from someone whose 1st language is not English, but reading your title I first thought you spoke about "numbers" as "figures" can also be used in that meaning). :wink:

I tried to do a search and find a how-to ... but I lack the right terms for the search to be specific enough, so pls forgive me opening this new thread. My question / problem is: I have a picture and want to cut out a special portion of it, and I know beforehand the size of the newly created portion. Let's say I have a picture of 600x480, and I want to create a little avatar of say 100x100 from it. IN Photoshop I used to define width and height of the cut, before I would start making the selection, and nicely enough the selection tool would stick to these proportions, but here I haven't found such a function yet. Till now I just used my eye to try and get at least the closest proportion possible, then I cut that part out and resized the part to the desired size. Is there an easier way to do this? E.g. like it's being done in PS? Again, please forgive me in case it's been written/described somewhere, but there is so much information here, that most of the time I get lost - and as to using the search, sometimes I just can't seem to find the right search words.

Thanks for the question! I also wouldn't have known how to do that!

By stock image you mean: was it there already? Yes it was, it came with my new computer a few months ago (which has Vista) and is one of the integrated image examples. Artistic talents - oh well, I will have to dig deep in order to find some in me, but I promise I will try to! Thanks for the idea! PS: In my personal avatar, the tiny black dog is NOT looking for a new home, she's been home with me now for a year. But she also came from there - as a pup she had been thrown out of a driving car and been rescued by some animal protectors. (Thank God! I'm so in love with her!)

Having started with PDN only recently (last Wednesday), I am looking out for the easier tuts to begin with... and today, I found a reeeeaaaally easy signature tut. It's based on the shwoop thing - hope it's not too unpretentious for you guys in here. I didn't read the whole thread as of yet, just pages 1-5 or so. It wouldn't do justice to all the work you've put in if I just rushed through all these pages, so I take my time and come back and see more. Here's the 2 sig's I did today. #1) #2) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For another forum I did some avatars (for the team members - we are a group of individuals who rescue Hungarian dogs from being killed and find new homes for them in Germany). So one of the other tuts I saw yesterday was another how-to, dealing with how to create movements in a picture (animated gifs - I never did that before). So I downloaded this little program and got started. I just show one of the avatars, they are basically all the same, except for the dogs displayed. The words in it say: "Every night I pray that you will find me" - and is hinting at a German pop song which is quite popular at the moment (there it goes: "every night I pray that I will find you"... oh well..)