Reptillian

There's actually indirect support for AI-related things for Paint.NET. G'MIC 2.8 has rudimentary support for it.

You don't. You use a batch processing program. ImageMagick/G'MIC-QT. G'MIC-QT can do that within GIMP or Krita.

G'MIC 2.8 has arrived, note the latest filter I am working on (new updated shape gradient) haven't been finished, I am still having a lot of issues there and there. That being said, you do have these changes to keep in mind: 1) New Spiral Distort 2) Enhancement for Form Pixels for Paint.NET users. It was designed for GIMP or Krita in mind because G'MIC QT can make them resize layer to area that filters resizes images. 3) Chaos is now in Thorn Fractal 4) Extended TR's Pixel Sharpener 5) Fibonacci Fill Filter 6) Faster Nebulous and Distortion Filters

Okay, it's coming though I have to work some quirks! A preview of the g'mic version shaped gradient filter. @HyReZ My test on 5k image with 64 GB RAM - 1 minute. Though the flexibility is probably worth it.

@HyReZ I am about to finish the new Shaped_Gradient filter. I tested some other filters that is going to be incorporated into this one like streak and transformations and while I can't guarantee it'll be fast as that filter, it will have more features than that. And speaking of which, during developing a streak technique taking into account of opacity. I wonder if I should make a new filter using this. First, the left picture has G'MIC-QT filter 'Random Shade Stripe applied'. All the channels are affected. Next, I have applied my streak filter.If you look closely, the darker areas has more streaks than the lighter area. Areas with more alpha will be less affected than areas with less alpha.

@Eli Can you send me the image that it was used on? I wasn't able to reproduce it.

It was hard to choose, I gotta say that.

I have been able to recreate the 3D gradient effect though the point displacement is missing. This one is now better than my previous attempt. Gradient color option can be added though. With my version, you'd be able to use original image colors or custom colors or blend both. I do wish I can work with 3D in G'MIC, so I might be able to figure out how to create point_displacement as well as better anti-aliasing and more speed, but oh well.-

This goes to @HyReZ who wanted a faster version of shaped gradient filter Decided to try to attempt extending @n d shaped filter. I gotta say that I'm not quite happy with it. I'll find some other methods, but I could release under request. I had rapidly cropped from PDN screenshot, so please ignore the border.

There is machine-learning approach to this problem though. I saw something where you assign a reference image to a smaller image, and then you enlarge a image, and the result looks a bit more believable. I don't remember where I can find it, but it's somewhere in a discuss.pixls.us thread and it's about scaling.

Is buying a new monitor is a viable option for some PDN users? I just had to ask because it seem like there could be a workaround from a theoretical point of view. That's not talking in practice though.

It been about 10 years, so it's not likely he'll be back. By the way I do have plans to do something like this, but with the option to use image color instead. It would be just as slow because of the loop requirement, but however I may be able to make it more accurate. EDIT: I may have a solution to this soon though I don't know if it is translate-able to C# plugin. I am able to make it support original color, and by extension, I can also allow users to specify gradient as well, and to use blending mode.

More changes coming to 2.8 - TR's Intense Filtration gets better starting point parameter - 100% bugfree Premade Palette GUI filter

Basically, for loop or do while loop to transform the image, then blend the transform image with the current image, and repeat this process. The rest of the details is something I can't speak about, but the processing part is like that.

I don't think you need a example image. I think what he means is what you get when you print screen then paste, rinse and repeat while having a raster graphic art software open.