tails8762

First off, I want to start of by saying that I've been using Paint.NET for the longest time (according to my harddrive, it was at least since 2007 with v3.08) and it still is my image editor of choice. I definitely appreciate the work that's gone into this, coming from someone who isn't a programmer. So when I went from v3.5 to v4.0, I happily upgraded. First thing I noticed was the change in UI. Now I'm fine with the list of projects across the top being left-aligned instead of right-aligned; that's something I can easily and have adjusted to. And yes, having the Settings moved to a smaller button in the top-right can be a bit of a headache for some, but I don't really tamper with those so it's not an issue for me. The removal of the drop-down menu for Zoom, however, is where problems arise. One thing I always found particularly useful in 3.0-3.5 was that, when clicking inside the box for the Zoom (and this also worked for Text size too.. never the Font, though), I could scroll up/down to select how far I wanted to zoom in/out; I was able to go from an insane zoom-in (800%, 1200%, 1600%) to exactly 100% Zoom in a snap. And while I can't do that anymore in v4.0, the alternative to this is to hold down CTRL and scroll up/down to zoom. Which would be fine, if the numbers for zooming were... consistent? If I zoom in using CTRL+scroll from 100%, I go to 125%. Then 157%. Then 197%, 248%, 311%, 390%, 489%, 613%, 769%, 964%, 1210%, 1517%... you get the picture. But what's weirder is that if I was to zoom in from 100% all the way to 3200%, then back out again, I don't reach 100% Zoom; Instead, I get to 107%, meaning I have to correct it with either the Zoom tool or the Zoom in/out buttons on the bottom right. Now to be fair, this problem with the Zoom gradually getting inaccurate has persisted in older versions, but now I feel it's more of an issue because now it's not as quickly rectified manually. After doing some number crunching, I appear to have found the reason: It appears that holding down CTRL and scrolling will not cause Paint.NET to simply "select the next/previous zoom amount" - more rather, it appears to increase the zoom by a particualr amount (1.25x), then to avoid decimal points, rounds it down to the nearest integer, then adds 1: So yeah, perhaps if CTRL+scroll-zooming didn't zoom in/out exponentially, this problem would go away. I guess I should also apologise for not pointing this out any time sooner, but like I said; it wasn't so much an issue until now.

- Invert the colours (so you now have white text) - Make a new layer - Set the Layer Properties to Colour Burn - With the Brush Tool, carefully paint over the text, changing the colour as it goes. (Whether there's a "Preserve Transparency" thing I can't remember) - In theory, it should work.

Being able to move a selection from multiple layers.

- When pasting something that has transprency in an existing layer, the transparency doesn't overwrite what's behind it. - Have a more adjustable Anti-Alias for brushes and the eraser. -- On the topic of, don't have the Brushs' Anti-Alias settings the same as the Eraser's. - When zooming with the Mouse-wheel, zoom in/out by 10% exactly.

Have you tried saving the PNG as 32-bit?

The reason why I tend to use MSPaint as a primary program is that it's extremely simple to use. It's basic, but I can do some good things in it. For example, this I made entirely in Paint (with exception to the banner; that is the Black Marble bitmap from MS Word), recolouring and splicing all the sprites, copypasting the same sprites and tables over each other to give the impression of a layered image. Now yes I'm able make the same image in paint.NET by having several layers, but in MSPaint, everything's on one single layer, and with pasting things with a transparent background (via the secondary colour which I can change to what I please, so I can filter out everything red, or green, or white or whatever). I guess habits are hard to break. >.> I'll be sure to give the Alpha Mask plugin a try, though; I don't really have any custom plugins other than the ones that came with the install file.. Does the alpha work with shade of grey also?

1) Convert to Alpha / Anti-Aliasing fix? I created an image in Paint and after editting it a little, I copypasted it into paint.NET so I could do a little more work to it (this is how I usually work; make the basic image in MS Paint and do all the fancy work in paint.NET), but because Paint uses white as its canvas colour, I get the image with a white background. This is a bit of a pain because I want it transparent underneath. Now, one solution I can think of is to Magic Wand-then-delete the background colour (Tolerance=0%) and then go over the off-white outline with the Eraser tool with :AntiAliasingOn: on. However, this is a pain in itself as the Anti-Aliasing on the Eraser(at least in my version - v3.35) only has two modes: off and on. And when you're working with mere pixels, you'd want the Brush size to be a small as you want (I usually go for 7- or 13-pt), and with paint.NET the Eraser ends up taking away too much. In Adobe Fireworks the eraser/brush tool has an "Edge" preference, which is pretty much the Anti-Aliasing tool. But the "Edge" can be set to between 0-100 (0 being none and 100 being really sensitive; perfect for smaller brush sizes). Perhaps if paint.NET had a more adjustable anti-aliasing tool, then the smaller brush sizes would be easier to use with smaller brush sizes? But back on the topic in hand, in Fireworks (at least version 8, which is what's installed where I work), there is a command/plugin called "Convert to Alpha", where the image is turned greyscale and the lighter shade of grey a pixel is, the more transparent the image is. Could paint.NET have a plugin that does that?