MarkS

I don't doubt you. It is just very strange that I did not have any issues under Windows 7. My TGA loading code merely reads the image data into a buffer and does the BGR to RGB conversion. I wasn't even aware of the image descriptor. Not a hard problem to fix. "Mathematically Speaking" Huh. I never thought of it that way. Considering the content and the expected usage, I wouldn't expect the mathematical "up" to be the up used. Pardon. You are correct. I keep forgetting this.

Just as a guess, I found a copy of 3.5.4 online and installed it. I get the same issue. I'm wondering if it is somehow related to XP? Maybe a .NET issue? All I know for certain is that the image was saved right side up in Windows 7 x64. Could it be a x64 vs. x32 issue? Very odd indeed.

I have been using 3.5.4 on Windows 7, but have recently had to downgrade to XP (long story) and installed 3.5.5 on XP. I am using Paint.net for game art and noticed something very odd. Under Windows 7 and 3.5.4, I could save a TGA file and my TGA loader would open the file just fine. However, in 3.5.5, my loader loads the image vertically flipped. The solution is on my end; I was unaware of this option in the TGA specs and my loader wasn't accounting for it. What I am curious about is why Paint.net is NOW flipping the image when saving TGAs? This is an odd option in the TGA file spec and I am really baffled that any current app supports this option. Why save an image upside down? It may have made sense in 1984 when the specification was written (along with the BGR instead of RGB), but makes absolutely no sense now. Maybe people stood on their heads to view images in 1984? I didn't touch a computer until 1985 at age 8, so I really don't know... This actually benefited me in the long run as I now will have a more robust file loader, but I still find this more than a little strange. I am assuming that there is a good reason for this, but cannot figure it out for the life of me. Any ideas?

I know this isn't a GIMP support forum, but as a regular GIMP user myself, I'm going to guess you're using the Paintbrush tool, which is soft edged and not grid-constrained, therefore making it difficult to use to draw single pixels. The Pencil tool is hard-edged and pixel-constrained, so it will always make a solid pixel fill of your selected color. I've tried the pencil tool as well with the same effect. I'm assuming it is due to my unfamiliarity with GIMP. But, like you said, this isn't a GIMP support forum. :wink:

There are ways to do this. You have mentioned one and I've use a plug in to accomplish it. My point is that in order to do this in Paint.net, more steps are necessary than should be required. This is a common operation in image editing programs and one that is done via the color picker tool. It is an extended functionality that the color picker in Paint.net is missing. I'm not saying that it is impossible to do without this functionality. In fact, as I've stated, I've already done it. I'm just saying that there is and should be an easier way. This is a simple bit of code to write.

I don't want to blur the layer. What I'm doing (or rather have have done) is average the colors used in the dither and then filled the dithered areas with the averaged solid color. It is just that doing so required more steps than should be necessary.

I just found out about Paint.net via gamedev.net and I'm glad to find this! I did look at the frequently requests thread and did a search, but I couldn't find this request, so here goes... It would be nice if the color picker had an option to pick the average color of the pixels surrounding the cursor. Inkscape does this interactively (clicking and dragging shows a circle in which the pixels will be averaged) and GIMP allows the user to select the radius via a slider and edit box. I'm in need of this feature because I'm editing some game images (tiles and sprites) from a game my dad was working on in the 90's. They are 8-bit and dithered. By averaging the colors, I can get a pretty close color to what was intended with the dither. Of course, that requires the color picker to average the colors. Both GIMP and Inkscape are very powerful, but neither are really suited to edit images as I need. Inkscape is a vector program and makes it difficult to edit individual pixels and GIMP seems to think that drawing in a solid color with a single click is a bad thing to do :shock: (???). If this feature currently exists, please show me how to activate it. I went through the documentation, but to no avail. [edit] I did find a plug-in that averages the colors contained in a selection and it works suitably, but this would still be a good feature. The plug-in requires several redundant steps, e.g., making a selection, choosing the plug-in, deselecting, picking the color with the color picker and then drawing. These steps could be reduced to two (picking and drawing) with this feature.