MJW

a few innings later....

Perhaps you could explain what, exactly, Procreate can do. I doubt I'm the only one who has never heard of Procreate, or has no idea what it does. Taking a guess at what you might be after, there's a plugin by pyrochild called ScriptLab that lets you record a series of effect actions. No plugin can record things like selections, layer activation, image resizing, etc. It's impossible for plugins to do that.

That's a reflective text effect. You might take a look at the Clipwarp Shiny Text tutorial by barbieq25 and the Glossy Metallic Text tutorial by welshblue. Another way to do that is with my Texture Shader plugin, using one of the reflection modes on a height map produced by blurring white-on-black text. (When doing that kind of effect, it's almost always advisable to work at at least twice the final size then resize, since most methods are prone to ugly aliasing artifacts.) (If no one provides more practical advice in a few days, I'll try to come up with a suggestion on how to achieve a similar effect.)

This is probably the wrong place to ask your question. This section of the forum is devoted to questions and discussions about writing plugins. Unless you're asking how to import an image into a plugin you want to write (which might be what you mean by "whether or not it is even possible to do through code"), your question belongs in Paint.NET Discussions and Questions. I think you need to explain what you are trying to do in more detail. Err on the side of over-explaining.

I considered changing the background to a sky, but the downward view angle of the photo makes that difficult. Or at least I couldn't figure out how to make it look right.

Here's my attempt. You can use it if you wish, but I hope you try to replicate the steps or do your own variation. The steps I used: Copy the original image into PDN. To add the halo -- Add a new (transparent) layer. Set the Primary Color to white and the Secondary Color to black (by clicking the switch colors arrow in the Color Menu.) Select the Shape Tool, and set the Shape to an ellipse. The Brush Width should be 2. Draw an ellipse for the halo. Adjust it till the position looks right. It wil need to be moved around and tilted. [You should now have a white halo. Now to add a glow.] Run the Object>Edge Expander plugin with the following values: Maximum Distance: 26 Fade Rate; 2.0 (maximum value) Opacity Threshold: 255 (default) [You could draw the ellipse with a wider brush and only use a Gaussian Blur, but I think the Edge Expander glow looks better.] Run Blurs>Gaussian Blur Radius:2 (default) [ You should now have a glowing halo. Now to make it fade toward the back.] Select the Gradient Tool with the (default) Linear Gradient. Change the mode from Color Mode to Transparency Mode. Holding down the left button, start with the cursor at the front of the halo and move it to the back till the fading looks correct. It may take a few un-dos and retries. If the halo is a bit too bright, adjust the layer Opacity. In my example, I set the Opacity to 230. [You should now have a glowing, fading-toward-the back halo. Now to adjust the lighting on the dog. This is largely a matter of taste.] Make the dog layer active. Run Photo>Vignette. Start with the Density all the way up so you can easily see the highlighted region. Adjust the Center and Radius to highlight the front/top of the dog's head. When the right region is selected, adjust the Density as desired. I used: X Center: 0.25 Y Center: -0.14 Radius: 0.21 Density: 0.60 Run Photo>Glow. I used: Radius: 6 Brightness: 10 Contrast: 10 If the halo doesn't seem like it's in the best position, use the Move Selected Pixels tool to adjust its location, size, tilt, etc. The image is now complete. You may want to tweak the Brightness and Contrast, or the Hue and Saturation to get the best look.You should probably save the layered version before flattening to produce the final result. There's nothing special about the exact values I used. I did it by eye, then went back to check the values.

I don't have time at this moment, but I'll provide more step-by-step details later, if no one else has.

I believe there are two things that need to be done. The first is creating the halo. That should be pretty easy, though I'll need to try out a few ideas before suggesting one. The second is to make the top of dog's head appear to be illuminated by the halo's glow. That's not absolutely necessary, but I think it would certainly enhance the effect. How to do that part is a bit less obvious.

Sorry about your friend's pet. Asking others to do work for you is against the forum rules: You'll have no problem finding people to advise you on how do effects like that yourself. I think you'll discover that it isn't too difficult. (If no one responds soon, I'll try to come up with a good method, myself.)

I don't find that "It hurts when I do this. Don't do that." advice particularly helpful Zooming in is often necessary to accurately paint or erase along an edge; and a consequence of zooming is that only a small region is visible, so it's necessary to move outside the currently visible area. If auto-scroll doesn't behave in a reasonable manner, why have it at all? The brush might as well stop at the border rather than do something that's at best useless.

Thanks, toe_head2001. I was, of course, hoping it had incredible secret powers. Nevertheless the window adjustments might prove useful for some plugins.

I take it then that (as the name suggests) OnCustomizeConfigUIWindowProperties is used to modify the UI windows characteristics. Can it be said that OnCustomizeConfigUIWindowProperties is used exclusively to modify the UI windows characteristics, so it has no other uses?

It's certainly good advice in general to save the layered version to allow for future changes. I must say though, if it were me, and it were just a matter of adding a white background to an image I had access to, I wouldn't bother saving the layered version. (I confess there have been a few occasions when I didn't save the layers of an image and later wished I had.) If I want a flattened version of an image of which I want to keep the layered version, I use Ctrl+Shift+C (copy merged) followed by "Edit>Paste into New Image" (whose shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+V). I then save the flattened version without disturbing the file association of the layered version. (I always use the shortcut to copy the merged image, since it doesn't require doing a "Select All" first. I generally use the "Edit>Paste into New Image" command instead of the shortcut, because I can seldom remember most of the shortcuts.)

Probably the easiest way is to use the command: Image>Flatten. In the top-left side of the PDN window there's a list of command categories: File Edit View Image Layers Adjustments Effects. Left click on on the Image heading, then select Flatten from the drop-down list. Or use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+Shift+F. Other ways: make the top layer the active layer using the Layer Menu, then use Layers>Merge Layer Down, or its shortcut Ctrl+M. The same thing can be done from the Layer Menu by clicking the Merge Layer Down icon at the bottom of the menu.

There's a method in the PropertyBasedEffects called OnCustomizeConfigUIWindowProperties. It's used to change the window title and initialize the Help menu, but I was wondering when exactly it gets called, and what else, if anything, can be done with it? In other words, is there anything else plugin programmers might want to use it for? The code to change the window title is: protected override void OnCustomizeConfigUIWindowProperties(PropertyCollection props) { // Change the effect's window title props[ControlInfoPropertyNames.WindowTitle].Value = "New Window Title"; base.OnCustomizeConfigUIWindowProperties(props); }

Congratulations to Pixey, lynxster4, and dipstick! Pixey's woman-in-red (self-portrait?) is particularly well done. I was especially impressed with lynxster4's peacock: a most well-conceived and well-executed Art Nouveau image. I also liked LionsDragon's trees -- though it was perhaps closer to Arts-&-Crafts style than Art Nouveau. I'm sorry I couldn't join the fray.

Not being able to reset all the controls with a single button is a limitation of IndirectUI (as BoltBait alluded to in his response). Any effect with tabs isn't using IndirectUI. Most PDN plugins use IndirectUI, because it's considerably easier than implementing the user interface from scratch, and it assures a consistent look-and-feel. (For what it's worth, I agree with Tango that for a photo adjustment like this, it would be better if the default was no modification.)

I'm so sorry to hear about your father, lynkster4. Your Art Nouveau peacock is terrific, and the enameled-broach version is even better than the SOTW entry.

Yes, that runaway auto-scrolling at the edge of the window is most irritating. I'm not sure what the best solution would be. I think I'd like the speed of the scrolling to be limited to some reasonable value.

Double sliders have three values by which they can change: the UpDown increment, the small slider change, and the large slider change. Clicking the UpDown control adds or subtracts the increment. I would like to see the DoubleSlider control modified so that holding down the shift key while clicking would change the control by the small change, and holding down the control key while clicking would cause it to change by the large change. There are many cases when the slider control precision has to be quite small (such as 4 decimal places) in some circumstances. Unless the increment is equally small, the only way to enter precise values is to type them in. However this often results in clicks for the typical circumstances producing almost no noticeable change. The proposed change would allow the rough position to be reached quickly, while still allowing precise adjustments. It would not affect the use of the control unless the user knowingly held down the shift or control key, so it would be unlikely to confuse a naive user.

That would be most welcome for those like me who want to trace shapes. I was going to post the request to the ShapeMaker thread, but now I guess I don't have to.

The sad fact is, plugins that open a new window for editing don't have access to the other layers. I certainly feel your pain. Perhaps in the future writers of such plugins can be encouraged to allow the image in the clipboard to be used as the background. That wouldn't solve the problem entirely, but it would be an improvement. Unfortunately, TR hasn't been around the forum for quite a while, so no update of SplineMaster is likely.

Thanks to Maximilian and Iron67 for their explanations. I'll add a bit more detail to my original example. EDIT: I've now added an explanation of how the transparent grid was added to the flower picture. I'm sorry I didn't to that in the first place.

As toe_head2001 says, use an image format that supports transparency. The image in your comment is in JPEG format, which does not. In the future, please choose more descriptive thread titles. It's not just good manners, it's the rules: