kreemoweet

Paint.net doesn't actually do printing, it just calls up the Windows Print Image Wizard (not part of paint.net), which certainly leaves a lot to be desired. You are well advised to use some program which has decent printing functionality, such as IrfanView or FastStone Image Viewer. And be advised, that no matter what it says in some dialog, digital images do not have an "actual" size, that's something that only physical objects (such as a printed page) can have.

You can't do that with the printing software that Paint.net uses, which is Window's "Print Pictures" dialog. It is not a part of Paint.net. There are other image editing programs which have vastly superior printing abilities, such as IrfanView, FastStone Image Editor, even Microsoft's own Paint. Also, Microsoft Word can resize images for printing, if you happen to have that installed.

The below image stitcher program (Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor) has always worked well for me. It has been retired and no longer available from Microsoft, but you should be able to get it from the Web Archive at the following link: https://web.archive.org/web/20180724063025/https://download.microsoft.com/download/7/3/9/73918E0B-C146-40FA-B18C-EADF03FEC4BA/ICE-2.0.3-for-64-bit-Windows.msi

I bypassed all the endless drama with Windows 10 "Open With ..." menu simply by creating a shortcut to the Paint.net executable, and placing it in the Send To folder. I can send anything to Paint.net now, no muss, no fuss, no Registry fiddling. I can even send multiple image files - try THAT with the Open With ... menu!

I don't see why it has to. Moreover, if I open a .jpg image with a non-96 ppi value in its metadata, the resize dialog still shows a ppi of 96. IMO false data is far worse than no data.

Oh! Well then, when I open paint.net, I get a blank 800x600 pixel canvas. Converted to inches, 8.33"x6.25". So, 96 ppi. Where does that come from? I never specified any such thing, except in Windows Settings, a lie I had to tell Windows to prevent weird little graphical glitches. I've never had a monitor that was 96 ppi.

And furthermore, the shown dimensions (in inches or centimeters) will almost never be accurate, because they depend on what the OS reports as the screen PPI, which is, as far as I can tell, almost never correct. In fact, telling Windows the actual size of your screen pixels will result in all sorts of UI graphics distortions.

Interlaced images are simply an annoyance, under any circumstances. Don't do it.

There are no fonts in images, which is what Paint.net deals with. Users of Paint.net can use any font that happens to be intalled in Windows to insert "text" in images, but the text ends up being just pixels in the image, like all other pixels. Paint.net has no particular font(s) associated with it, it just uses whatever is already installed in the machine.

Well, I sort of found out why this is happening. On my machine, I have maybe a half-dozen applications that can open images. As often as not, merely opening an image with one of those will change the existing "default" opener for that image type. And the new default will not necessarily be the program I just used, or the pre-existing default. For instance, a bit ago I had all my .jpg files showing the PDN icon in Explorer, and I used the "Open with ..." menu to open one of them in Windows Paint. I closed out Paint, and restarted Explorer. Now, all the .jpg files are shown as "IrfanView JPG File"s. Anyway, whenever an image is associated with PDN in Explorer, and I choose the Print action, it seems the command registered at HKCR\ paint.net.1\shell\print\command is executed, which opens both paint.net with the image showing, and the Print Pictures Wizard on top of that. I just deleted that "print" subkey, and now everything works as it should.

I suppose this might be just another oddity of Windows 10 file association system, which to me seems beyond inscrutable. Right-clicking on a .jpg file in Windows Explorer and choosing "Print" will open the expected "Print Pictures" dialog box, but also a paint.net window behind it with the subject image open it it. It so happens that, today anyway, .jpg files are associated with paint.net (has the PDN icon in Explorer). Printing other image file types which (at the moment) do not have the PDN icon next to them, opens only the Print Pictures dialog. It does not seem appropriate that paint.net would open as it does like this, especially since the image types associated with PDN on my machine seem to change willy-nilly. Using PDN 4.3.12.

Windows has a specific Control Panel app that can be used to uninstall no-longer-used printers. It's called "Devices and Printers".

Precise control over the printed image size requires 3rd-party software. Paint.net uses Microsoft's image printing dialog, which is not very functional. There used to be a paint.net plugin (Print It) that worked fairly well, but is currently broken. FastStone Image Viewer and IrfanView have decent print sizing dialogs.

Paint.net has to get its information on how many screen pixels make a unit of length from the operating system (i.e. Windows). Windows is not able to use accurate pixels-per-inch numbers without causing large display problems. Windows can only handle some very approximate DPI settings, such as 96, 120, etc. If you find out what your monitor's pixel size actually is, and then set Window's DPI value to that actual value, then you should theoretically get accurate rulers in Paint.net. But at a price.

I just saw a post here that contained a screenshot of paint.net 4.3.10, with a Tools window title that actually said "Tools". For years now, all I've gotten is a miserable "T.." for a title. The online documentation shows a Tools window title of "To...". Just what is the secret of obtaining a non-truncated title up there? Why does that window have to be so darn skinny?

There is no "actual size". Digital images do not have physical sizes. The "size" attribute you see in properties just tells you how large the image would be IF it was displayed at the (arbitrary) DPI attribute also in properties. The DPI number can be anything. The Windows Paint program has a print dialog that can be used to adjust the image print size. The one used by Paint.net has much more limited options, but you can certainly use it to choose more than full-page sizes.

Print It plugin is broken no matter where you put those OBL files. File: C:\Program Files\paint.net\Effects\PrintIt.Effect.dll Name: OptionBasedEffects.PrintIt Version: 0.9.0.1162 Author: Martin Osieka Copyright: © 2014, ComSquare AG, Switzerland Website: http://forums.comsquare.ch/viewforum.php?title=Paint.NET Tools Full error message: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Management, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'. The system cannot find the file specified. File name: 'System.Management, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' at ControlExtensions.PrinterInfos.Property(String printerName, String propertyName) at ControlExtensions.PrinterInfos.PrinterStatus(String printerName) at OptionControls.OptionPrinterDevice.PopulatePrinterStatusInfo() at OptionControls.OptionPrinterDevice.UpdateFromPrintDocument() at OptionControls.OptionPrinterDevice.OnValueChanged() at System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox.OnSelectedIndexChanged(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox.set_SelectedIndex(Int32 value) at OptionControls.OptionPrinterDevice..ctor(Enum optId, OptionContext optContext, VirtualPrintDocument vpd) at OptionBasedEffects.PrintIt.OnSetupOptions(OptionContext optContext) at OptionBased.Effects.OptionBasedEffect.CreateConfigDialog() at PaintDotNet.Menus.EffectMenuBase.RunEffectImpl(IEffectInfo effectInfo) in D:\src\pdn\src\PaintDotNet\Menus\EffectMenuBase.cs:line 846

Microsoft won't let you have actual window borders anymore, but I noticed your windows don't have "shadows" like mine do in Windows 10. There's a well-hidden setting in Windows 10 that might help the visibility: Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings (link on left side) > Performance "Settings" button > Checkbox for "Show shadows under windows".

I've used this image stitcher very successfully to join together Google Maps images: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/product/computational-photography-applications/image-composite-editor/

There's a Linux program which could fairly be described as a clone of Paint.net: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinta_%28software%29.

I've created/edited many electrical schematics using mostly the Rectangle tool to draw wires: just about any combination of two colors, scads of fill patterns, bordered or borderless, any width. No plugin needed. It's usually necessary to zoom in and clean up the intersections/direction changes. Easy and fun!

What you ask is impossible. When you select and save a part of an image, all PDN can do is save the pixels you have selected. There is NO way to also save the "what zoomlevel Drawflies likes to see these pixels displayed at" information along with the pixels.

Digital images do not have a physical size, regardless of what any attributes of the image may suggest, so the term "actual size" is really quite meaningless. Also, the Windows image printing facility which Paint.net uses is very limited and simply does not have the ability to print images at arbitrary sizes. There may be further limitations imposed by your printer.

People who wander around the Internet without using an adblocker really make me wonder; just like I would if I saw someone out my window wandering around and shivering in the cold rain without coat or umbrella.

Keep in mind that if you have an X by Y sized image, and reduce it to an X/2 by Y/2 image, you are discarding 75% of the image information. One would expect a little fuzziness to be the result. Don't you have these drawings available in some CAD drawing format? I think the associated CAD software scales them down using completely different methods.