Lobalobo

Saw the reply; thanks. Not sure why Custom Brushes is using 2GB of memory: never did before--I frequently used Custom Brushes before reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling Paint.Net. I wonder, then, what has changed and whether I may have installed a more memory intensive version of the brushes software.

Thanks for the plugin, but I'm crashing every time I use Custom Brushes. I believe I've loaded the most recent, but I'll check. In the meantime, the error log is attached.pdncrashlog.txt

Custom Brushes (SBPLUGINSBEST) crashes on every use. Error Log is attached. Thanks in advance for any advice.pdncrashlog.txt

Exactly. Thanks for the help.

Color to Alpha is exactly what I was looking for; thanks so much.

An image of a tree with fine branches in winter against a sky I want to darken. My goal is to create a duplicate layer of the image to darken but where the tree is transparent so I can put the darkened layer on top of the orignal image with an undarkened tree. Before my computer crashed, I used a plugin for this called, I thought, Alpha Mask. In this example, by selecting a spot on the tree I could make either everything the color of the tree or everything not disappear into transparency. But I can't seem to find the plugin now. I did look at the index of plugins and found some listings under Alpha, but none are described as the tool I need here (best I can tell). Thanks in advance for any help.

Thanks. I already use a number of Paint.Net plugins, and will look at the site you suggest. The Topaz function I was particularly interested in is one that quickly removes an object from its background, something I do frequently to unfocus the background, but that is time consuming in drawing lines by hand. Anything in Paint.Net that will do this? (I have tried the alpha color plugin, when the foreground and background are multicolored, this doesn't work well for this purpose.) Thanks again.

A nice feature of Topaz is that it generally works as a plugin for Irfanview. My current problem is that Irfanview does not support layers and at least one Topaz plugin works only on layers (and not on what it sees as a background layer). Any chance that a Topaz plugin will work in Paint.Net? Thanks.

Worked like a charm. Thank you.

Upgraded to v3.5 using the prompt from the program when launched and all was well until I tried to use the "Color to Alpha" plug-in, which is now disabled (even after restarting Paint.Net). Suggestions? Thanks in advance.

That did the trick; thanks. (Didn't solve my cloning problem, but I can now at least add brushes.)

To practice technique, I'm working on an image of a person standing in tall weeds against an (almost) uniform blue sky. I want to clone the person out of the image leaving just weeds and blue sky. Because the sky is almost but not quite uniform, cloning out the person always leaves a mark, no matter how much I reduce opacity at the edges. So in the first paragraph below, I describe the technique I'm trying and request comments or suggestions; in the second paragraph I ask a specific question about extracting the sky from between the weeds. Anyone bored by the first paragraph but with an answer to the title of the post, please just skip to the second paragraph. 1. After setting the original image as background, I create an extraction layer, eliminating the blue sky; I then duplicate this layer creating a weeds layer and erase the top of the person (the portion above the weed line) then clone the weeds over the bottom of the person (below the weed line). Next I duplicate the background again for a sky layer erasing everything below the weed line, cloning sky for everything above the weed line. (The cloned sky now shows where the person above the weeds has been turned to sky.) Next I duplicate the sky layer, creating a mask for the sky (though I may not be using the term properly) and set a portion of the sky as the primary color, then select the entire sky, erase it, and fill with the primary color on this sky mask layer, finally reducing the opacity of the sky mask layer to cover the clone marks but allow some of the differences in the actual sky to show through. If this all works, I can then flatten the sky mask layer, the sky layer, and weeds layer and have the final image. Is there a better way to do this? 2. Even if the above works, it is painstaking to extract the sky from between the weeds using the magic wand. And although this isn't strictly necessary for the process I describe above, I am curious about whether one can do this more easily in Paint.net. That is, is there something analogous to a touch up tool to remove background from behind grass, limbs, hair, etc. (There is for example in Play-with-Pictures, e.g., but I'd prefer to do this all within Paint.net.)

Thanks. Not sure who or what "CBM" is. Could you clarify? CustomBrushesMini Select my computer from the left and browse for the folder you have brushes in. Thanks again, but as I said in my original post I have installed Custom Brushes Mini but I can't use it because I can't find any brushes. This also explains why I can't browse for the folder I have brushes in because, as far as I know, I don't have any brushes, and that's why I posted the question. Where do I find or get the brushes? I'm particularly curious given your suggestion that if I can find the brushes it will or may solve my hard edge problem.

Thanks. Not sure who or what "CBM" is. Could you clarify? Also, when I press "add brush" I'm prompted to select a file from my own "My Pictures" folder, which contains no brushes.

Just started using Paint.Net and it's a pleasure. I have recently used the program to clone out foreground objects against a sky so that I can merge two exposures of the same scene. (HDR software won't work because the foreground includes trees moving in the breeze.) The method I used--thanks to a Paint.Net tutorial I found--was to start with the image as a background layer, duplicate and then blur the image (the blur layer), and then create a transparent paint layer. I fix the anchor of the clone stamp tool on a portion of the sky in the blur layer then (after making the blur layer invisible) I paint on the transparent paint layer; when I get to and then just past the edges of what I'm eliminating, I progressively reduce the opacity of the blur (i.e., the clone-stamp-anchor) layer and paint the translucent sky onto the paint layer. The result is pretty good, better than I was able to achieve using Akvis Multipbrush (though I didn't explore too deeply there after deciding not to buy it) and the Paint.net method is just as easy and provides greater flexibility. Still there is a visible edge and a difference in the texture of the cloned sky. In addition to asking for any general advice anyone might have, I have three specific questions: 1. Is there a way to anchor the clone stamp tool so that the source of the paint doesn't move with the brush? 2. Is there a way (and I know this has been asked before but not sure of the state of the art here) to get the edge to replicate the edge of a paintbrush where not all of the brush touches the paper at the same time so that there is no distinct edge as the brush moves? (Is this called "feathering," I'm not sure?) 3. Related to the last question, I downloaded the Custom Brushes Mini plugin and the plug-in loaded but the menu of brushes is empty and I don't know how to populate it. Does anyone know how to download brushes for this plugin? Thanks in advance.