Red ochre

Cool car Pixey! - Looks like something from the film 'Tron'.

Seerose, E.E.R., LionsDragon, Loaded, thank you all for your support ... I hope it gives you some ideas. Seerose - Great work! Beautiful butterfly.

Loaded, you may find this tutorial useful. Polygonal(gossamer)image

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download the PDF Polygonal (Gossamer) image I will try to keep this simple but there are many possible variants and alternatives to explore - please do experiment!... and post your results/tips in this thread. Required plugins: My Red ochre plugin pack and MJW's Edge-expander 1. Choose an image with a distinctive outline. Even better, draw and scan an original image. For this tutorial I will use this CC0 image from Pexel.com. If using a photographic image, try to choose one with a contrasting background. It will make turning it into an object much easier. If using a scanned drawing, convert it to black and alpha, (my Two-tone threshold can do this). You can of course draw the dots (vertices) where you wish this way. Tracing paper is very useful when scanning artwork - but that would be another tutorial. 2. Crop the image. 3. Resize the image - something in the range of 1000 pixels maximum dimension or less should work. (Image/Resize). 4. Select and delete the background. I used the magic wand in additive mode and clicked on the background till all was selected. If it selects parts of your subject, reduce the tolerance.The subject is now an 'object' (opaque pixels on a transparent layer). 5. Name the layer 'kingfisher object' or whatever is relevant for you. Do this by double clicking on the layer in the layers window and typing a name into the text box. 6. Save this image as a .png file (you don't want to do all that selecting again!). 7. Save as a .pdn file (always wise to save regularly). 8. Create a new layer and fill it with black. Either 'select all' and backspace or use the fill tool. Name this layer 'background'. 9. Create a new transparent layer and add some noise - Effects/Noise/Noise choice (the built-in one can't put noise on transparency). Name this the 'small dots' layer. 10. Move to the object layer, select the magic wand tool and click on the transparent area around the object. Now move to the small dots layer and press delete. 11. Copy the object layer (at stage 4) to the clipboard by moving to that layer then use Edit/Select all/Copy. 12 Move back to the small dots layer by clicking on it in the layers window. 13. We now need to apply the colours from the clipboard to the small dots. Many plugins can do this but I will use Effects/Tools/ClipWarpNew, with no warping. 14. Duplicate this layer, Name it 'big dots' and apply Effects/Object/Edge-expander with settings shown. 15. Hide the big dots layer by unchecking the visibility box. The small dots layer should now be active (highlighted in the layers window). 16. Run Effects/Iterative lines/Gossamer with the settings shown. Feel free to experiment though! 17. If some of the thin lines generated have obscured the edge of the object they can be deleted by first selecting the transparent space around the object on the object layer. Then move back to the Gossamer lines (small dots) layer and hit delete.The same idea as at stage 10. It also looks good to erase some of the lines with the eraser tool. 18. Turn the 'big dots' visibility back on. 19. Drag the object above the other layers and set its blend mode to multiply and lower the opacity. 20. Save as a .pdn file. Then select Image/Flatten then save as .png or .jpg file. Done!

Don't go blinding us all with science, a simple answer would suffice! Autumn Gfx, paint.net is very frugal with memory and should work fine, depending on the size of image you wish to manipulate.

Andrew David - Good image - perhaps try reducing the maximum distance in Gossamer - just keep experimenting till you get what you're aiming for! Seerose - lovely example of Cobweb! E.E.R. - will try to put something together. (Damn... thought I'd got away with brief instructions!) Loaded - thanks! I hope you can create an image similar to the example you posted.

Thanks Andrew! Gossamer can be tricky to use as giving it too many points will make it very slow and create so many lines it obscures the desired effect. I started with a scanned line drawing which I changed to black on a transparent layer using Two-tone threshold. I then reduced the number of 'solid' black pixels by using 'Noise choice' on its transparency setting followed by Alpha threshold. At this stage it should look like tea leaves along the path of the original lines. These opaque dots can be coloured with Object2colour or even Gradients Galore with the 'on object only' button checked. Then run Gossamer... if it takes too long, quit and go back and reduce the number of dots further. As the lines are 1px wide it is also quite sensitive to the canvas size used. Hope that helps a bit - I try to avoid writing tutorials!

Mainly Gossamer, Cobweb for the stars.

25 plugins doesn't seem that many? I think the Rainbow Palette.txt should be in Documents/Paint.NET user files not 'Effects', but I doubt that is causing the problem.

Hello ebondream, Just press the shift button while dragging the control nubs.

I feared as much

Well done!

Would there be any implications for plugins?

cristi4ever & null54, thanks for the info ... so we'll only be allowed MS malware

I think a setting to pick a custom U.I. background colour would be useful. What does that mean?

Another beauty! You'll need a longer shelf now

Informative tutorial - thank you! (and apologies for not commenting on your excellent gallery thread yet) Some thoughts (not criticisms!) 1. Do use the reseed button in Dryad at stage 1 to get a tree of approximately the right shape. Reducing the deviation angles can also help with low hanging branches. 2. If you leave the tree as an 'object' (on a transparent background) you could use my Object Bevel plugin to help with the shading. If that shading is too abrupt, 'OverBlur' can soften it whilst retaining the object edges. 3. Personally I always avoid merging objects down onto opaque layers. Your shading technique should still work by selecting the transparent areas and inverting the selection. ... Just thoughts. Clearly written tutorial with great results as is!

Good work! Where does glossary stop and encyclopaedia begin?... I think you've struck a good balance! I see kilobytes have shrunk - I'm sure they used to have 1024 bytes in the old days. Possible additions? completely at your discretion. Height map: A way of encoding height information into the pixels of one image. Used to distort or shade another image. Sampling rate/Quality?Antialiasing*: Processing extra points 'between' pixels and averaging to get smoother results? Clipboard: Where 'copied' things are temporarily stored. Sprite sheet: Multiple images in one layer often used for animations. RAW file type: Unprocessed image data from high-end cameras? - *Antialiasing with a slightly different meaning to the edge antialiasing around objects.

Hi Joshua! Well done on starting a gallery, cool images, especially 'Water Avatar' - great imagination! I agree that hand drawing and scanning is a great way to start an image. I'm also very impressed by your Brush factory plugin! (Now you've changed your forum name I will keep thinking of you as 'Anthony Joshua' - the heavy-weight boxing champ!)

Perhaps try TR's Dodge & Burn (and blur)

You could try my Alpha-threshold plugin after the first image. Easier than tweaking pixel by pixel, hopefully.

Glossary: Place to keep very shiny paint. E.E.R: Definition of altruism. ---------------------------------------- Alpha: Opacity value of a pixel between 0 and 255, often referred to as transparency, its inverse. Bezier curve: type of curve used by the line tool. Spline curve: the other type of line used by the line tool. B.G.R.A: Blue,Green,Red,Alpha - the four values that define a pixel in paint.net G.U.I: Graphical User Interface (see U.I.) ARGB: See B.G.R.A Bit map: '.bmp', image file format. CMYK:Cyan,Magenta,Yellow,Black - Ink colors commonly used in printing H,S,V: Hue,Saturation,Value Hue: as a seperate definition, clock-wise angle around the color wheel from red? Saturation:as a seperate definition,distance from the gray middle of the color wheel? Value: the apparent lightness of a color. Tone: the apparent lightness of a color, calculated in a different way. Lightness: also the apparent lightness of a color, calculated in yet another way. Chroma: Nobody really knows. Just some ideas, perhaps Bezier and Spline are paint.net relevant? Btw the table shown is half grey lines and half black?

Good to see how you developed your idea!

Hello 357mag, Perhaps this tutorial would be a starting point picture side by side Basically make the Canvas size twice as big as each of the images then put the images on different layers and move to the correct position, much as Iron67 says.

^I'm a Ninja!