lapland

Last Monday the school I attended 35 years ago was hit by a tornado, and much of it was destroyed. Someone raised the Flag on the pole, which was bent in the tornado. I thought it would be a perfect picture to utilize for fundraising T-Shirts, but have limited experience with editing pictures for such things. What suggestions would you have and how can I make it a reality? I thought maybe cutting the picture in a heart shape with the two towers being in the top hoops of the heart. Just not sure if it would have the emotional connection I'm looking for. Since it is in Iowa, I had thought of the outline of the state as well. Being so limited to experience, I'm not even sure how to cut out a heart shape with Paint.net.

Is the PNG similar to the GIF transparency? The sign is suppose to support both PNG and GIF, but I know it doesn't support transparency in GIF images. I've tried that one. Didn't know to try the PNG. My big problem is getting an image to post, such as a corporate logo, or a photo and having to scale the image down to a usable size. Although the software imports any image and resizes it, sometimes it looks horid after resizing. Yes the image is about the size of a thumbnail image, but displayed on a big sign along the road. The resolution isn't really a problem because people are usually driving when they read or view the sign. It's basically used for advertising such as birthday, community events, anniversaries, etc. There is a limited supply of specilized videos for the sign but most are product advertisements, which we don't need. Thanks for the advise on resizing by whole numbers, instead of just randomly resizing down. If I can divide the image by whole numbers it may look better.

Tourism group in southern Iowa bought an LCD display that is approx 5' tall by 8' wide. Specifically 64 bits tall and 112 bits wide. I have been in charge of its operation since it's purchase over a year ago and it works fairly well. My problem is I am NOT an artist, nor the least bit artistic. I would like it to be special. It can handle various images and videos, and many I can simply convert so they will work. I recently found that MS Word has a somewhat limited word art that does some creative effects to text that I can then bring in as graphics. It sometimes works, but are there any fairly simple tricks in Paint.NET that I can do to make images, videos, etc that would make it stand out at such low res? I use Paint.NET exclusively for trying to resize pictures, blacking out the background, or clean up pictures that just don't look right on the screen. Currently I resize pictures incrementaly. That is when a pic starts out at 1500 pixals and I need it to be 64 I'll resize something like 20 times geting smaller each time. Sometimes I'll mess with contrast and sharpness to TRY to make the image clearer at the end. Any advice for the artistic disabled?