Transparent selection function

[Ilias]

Hi, just want to make request to add the MS Paint 's "transparent selection" function to the great Paint.net,

because i readed topic about it which was before want to explain: deal here not in layers, actual transparency or anything like that,

just white color in paint is same as transparency and can say when you selecting and moving anything-- white pixels is like white and no color pixels (transparent) in same time and you can choose what they would be,

but point and coolness of the feature is in that what in a lot of workflows on that kind of editors background is white,

so the requested addition is "switchable 'do not move pixels with [255,255,255] color undependent to their alpha'",

that small feature would be  awesome and hugely work speed increasing in a lot of cases  functionality in the editor.

 

(Using chance want to say  thank you  to developers for their work on the editor, here it will replace MS Paint in its tasks to complete  )

With respect

Ilias

Edited July 31, 2017 by Ilias

[BoltBait]

Sorry, but Rick is not going to add this functionality into paint.net.  MS Paint uses this hack because they don't have layers.  Basically, you just need to learn how to manipulate your images using the full power of layers.

 

This may help you: https://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/WorkingWithLayers.html

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Paint.net is not MS Paint. It is a great deal more powerful.

 

In paint.net the transparent areas are colored with a gray and white checkerboard pattern. This denotes transparency. Using the Magic Wand tool you can select transparent areas - just like and other color.

 

The trick I suspect you want is to not leave areas transparent, but to fill them with white. If so, simply create a new layer at the bottom of the layers stack (the list in the Layers Window) and fill this bottom layer with solid white.

 

The reason this works is that any other layers with transparent areas will allow the bottom layer (white) to show through.

 

[Ninja'd by BoltBait - but I'm posting anyway ]

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Oh, and welcome to the forum ilias

 

 

[Ilias]

2 hours ago, Ego Eram Reputo said:

Oh, and welcome to the forum ilias

Thanks, but no, i didn't meant any changes to transparency handling in the program or actions with background colors in project, i offered as i said ability to switch "do not move pixels with [255,255,255,|any|] color" to selection tools, 

2 hours ago, BoltBait said:

So..

I do know how to use layers and they are main reason why probably going to use Pant.net instead of MS Paint, it doesn't anyhow connected to the addition, the enchantment is functionality for selection system, which can't be substituted with same working speed by layers system.

Edited July 31, 2017 by Ilias

[Ilias]

or better, option to select color to ignore )

Edited July 31, 2017 by Ilias

[Rick Brewster]

You can probably use the selection tools that already exist to do this.

 

For instance, you could select a rectangular area with the Rectangle select tool. And then in order to remove pixels of a certain color, use the Magic Wand tool with two things selected in the toolbar: Subtract, and Global. You could also do it in reverse: use Magic Wand tool with Normal mode and Global, and then use Rectangle select tool with Intersect mode in order to clip it.

[Ilias]

7 hours ago, Rick Brewster said:

You can probably use the selection tools that already exist to do this.

 

For instance, you could select a rectangular area with the Rectangle select tool. And then in order to remove pixels of a certain color, use the Magic Wand tool with two things selected in the toolbar: Subtract, and Global. You could also do it in reverse: use Magic Wand tool with Normal mode and Global, and then use Rectangle select tool with Intersect mode in order to clip it.

magic wand selects similar color, not exact (it how it should be, but are not suitable in that case)

Edited August 1, 2017 by Ilias

[Rick Brewster]

Don't forget to set Tolerance to 0%. I missed that step. Then it selects only the same color as what you click on.

[Ilias]

1 minute ago, Rick Brewster said:

Don't forget to set Tolerance to 0%. I missed that step. Then it selects only the same color as what you click on.

okay, with global mode and tolerance 0 its working, agree,

thanks for responses (especially for pointing me to solution )

[MJW]

@Ilias, I'm not positive how you use the Paint feature, but if I interpret what you want to do correctly, I think that instead of doing all the tricky selection stuff, it might be easier to add a lower white layer, then remove the white from the upper layer with my  Color Clearer, ReMake's Eliminate Dark/Light, or one of the other similar plugins. Then the selections could be made and moved around over the white background without having to worry about the outer area of the selection obscuring some non-white pixels.

 

EDIT: You'd still need to use Paste into New layer to avoid overwriting with transparency, but that would be true no matter how the original selection worked.

[Ilias]

On 02.08.2017 at 2:05 AM, MJW said:

@Ilias, I'm not positive how you use the Paint feature, but if I interpret what you want to do correctly, I think that instead of doing all the tricky selection stuff, it might be easier to add a lower white layer, then remove the white from the upper layer with my  Color Clearer, ReMake's Eliminate Dark/Light, or one of the other similar plugins. Then the selections could be made and moved around over the white background without having to worry about the outer area of the selection obscuring some non-white pixels.

 

EDIT: You'd still need to use Paste into New layer to avoid overwriting with transparency, but that would be true no matter how the original selection worked.

(When you then making some for example white box, and placing something on it you will be unable to move it do not affecting the boxe's fill, you can't always make new layer for each thing which can get on another)

(without the solution i agreed with)

Edited August 22, 2017 by Ilias

[Ishi]

I love the transparent selection feature of MS Paint because it could do me wonders before I learned Paint.NET and how to work with layers.

 

Basically, I have a background image opened on one MS Paint window and lets say an image of a person opened on another MS Paint window which I would trace out and make sure that it is completely surrounded by white before copy-pasting it to the background image with the transparent selection enabled on both windows. There was jaggedness of course because MS Paint does not have a good feathering feature (but I know a technique how to do some of it on MS Paint). 

 

It makes a lot of sense on a program like MS Paint that has no layer support.

 

However, I think a variation of this  "transparent selection" idea may just be useful  on some situations like for moving text on the same layer. Because if I create a selection on a single letter and use the Move Selected Pixels tool to move that letter, the boundaries of my selection would force transparency on anything else outside that it touches, including other letters. I have encountered this quite a number of times, that I had to create another layer, paste my single letter there so I could move it freely without distorting the other letters. I think it would be an OK addition to "Move Selected Pixels" tool.

 

 

[Ilias]

On 23.08.2017 at 6:43 PM, Ishi said:

However, I think a variation of this  "transparent selection" idea may just be useful  on some situations like for moving text on the same layer. Because if I create a selection on a single letter and use the Move Selected Pixels tool to move that letter, the boundaries of my selection would force transparency on anything else outside that it touches, including other letters. I have encountered this quite a number of times, that I had to create another layer, paste my single letter there so I could move it freely without distorting the other letters. I think it would be an OK addition to "Move Selected Pixels" tool.=

wait, is there transparent pixels getting moved too ?

What a **** , i can understand no ability to ignore white, but holly crab, moving empty pixels is hell ridiculous

[Ishi]

Apparently I struggle with that. Completely transparent pixels/areas INSIDE selections are not ignored and would erase anything on the same layer that it touches when the selection is moved around. Very inconvenient for moving letters for me.

 

 

Edited October 13, 2017 by Ishi

[TSi]

Hi,

 

The transparent selection feature is quite useful in MS-Paint and is the only reason I use that program at work to assemble quick mockups of designs for presentations. What would take hours on photoshop and gimp ( taking time to de construct everything into it's own piece with transparency on it's own layer/folder, which is great for large projects) takes mere minutes when using MS-Paint and paint.net, especially when working in agile.

 

The main issue here is that by default when you're working on a layer in Paint.net and make a selection, it grabs the entire image's pixels instead of only those from the selected layer. This feels weird when you're used to Photoshop or Gimp. Because of that, it feels like each layer in Paint.net is an instance of MS Paint... So of course there is a mismatch between what you're expecting and what you get.

 

I recall someone saying that Paint.net has all the features of MS Paint but that's simply not true and you can see it in the main toolbar at the end of the selection tools options list.

 

On 10/13/2017 at 4:52 AM, Ishi said:

Apparently I struggle with that. Completely transparent pixels/areas INSIDE selections are not ignored and would erase anything on the same layer that it touches when the selection is moved around. Very inconvenient for moving letters for me.

YES ! That's part of the problem.

Paint.net deals with selections like MS Paint does except it also wants to use alpha as a main colour channel, which is wrong for many reasons. Because of that you get weird behaviours by default with selections that make no sense for most users.

 

There are other tools which either don't have the default MS Paint behaviour nor, because of how layers work, the Photoshop/Gimp behaviour.

For example, the pipette and fill tools don't work as expected out of the box. You have to tweak their options to get the MS Paint behaviour on a per-layer basis and to avoid destroying your work on background layers unlike in Photoshop where each layer is "protected" from the others.

 

 

 

Edited April 8, 2019 by TSi
aded details

[AndrewDavid]

Hi @TSi

Welcome to the forum.

1 hour ago, TSi said:

by default when you're working on a layer in Paint.net and make a selection, it grabs the entire image's pixels instead of only those from the selected layer.

 

I"m sure you are referring to the transparent pixels included in your selection. keep in mind you are selecting them.  Knowing they are selected, there are 2 ways to remove them.

First is by not selecting them. Use magic wand to select the transparent pixels then use Ctrl-I to invert selection to grab only colored pixels.

The second way is using magic wand to deselect the transparent pixels you have initially selected by right-clicking on a transparent pixel.

 

1 hour ago, TSi said:

There are other tools which either don't have the default MS Paint behaviour nor, because of how layers work, the Photoshop/Gimp behaviour.

 

I would think @Rick Brewster has no intention of mimicking these other software packages. He has created a unique application that takes some practice with to be able to do what those other packages can do. Some with built in features but many others with the assistance of the plugin contributors.

 

Just my 2 cents worth

 

[Ilias]

1 hour ago, AndrewDavid said:

 

1-stly, the 3+ steps use of a "magic wand" just to do things that are that basic and obviously expected by any normal user to happen by default are ridiculous,
not sure what the "that takes some practice with" mean, but if you practically meant "its good that its unergonomic, inefficient and ridiculous, because it makes it more unique", i think it is not other response needed than this clarification.

Edited April 8, 2019 by Ilias

[Eli]

4 hours ago, Ilias said:

expected by any normal user

I must be an abnormal user. If you keep using paint.net you are in danger of losing your normality. 🤪

[Ilias]

Note that i didn't meant that Paint.net is a bad program or that i do not use it, lot of works on PC would be meaningfully harder without it and i'm thankful to developers for making it, this thread are about a certain functionality, and i just personally hardly dislike when some people conceal issues by empty things like "it makes it unique" or "the issue are not real because i don't think feel/see it is" or "if its not a huge/key problem it doesn't worth being mentioned" or whatever else of such kind.
(for me this seems to be obvious, but people tend to look at things trough their kaleidoscopes)

Edited April 8, 2019 by Ilias

[Ego Eram Reputo]

8 hours ago, TSi said:

The main issue here is that by default when you're working on a layer in Paint.net and make a selection, it grabs the entire image's pixels instead of only those from the selected layer.

 

No it doesn't. Paint.net copies from the layer (only) unless you're using Copy Merged (Ctrl + Shift + C).

 

How are you copying once the selection is made?

 

 

[TSi]

13 hours ago, Ego Eram Reputo said:

 

No it doesn't. Paint.net copies from the layer (only) unless you're using Copy Merged (Ctrl + Shift + C).

 

How are you copying once the selection is made?

 

 

You're right, my bad.
I was mainly thinking about the transparent pixels in the selection and how they "errase" the content of your current layer which is annoying and there is no option to discard them "easilly", especially with a gradient to transparent.

[BoltBait]

5 hours ago, TSi said:

You're right, my bad.
I was mainly thinking about the transparent pixels in the selection and how they "errase" the content of your current layer which is annoying and there is no option to discard them "easilly", especially with a gradient to transparent.

 

To do what you expect, after selecting your pixels press Ctrl+X to cut them and press Ctrl+Shift+V to past them into a new layer.

 

Then, you can move your selection around like you expect where the transparent pixels do not replace the pixels below.

[ZomBJ]

Just want to comment that this would be a useful feature. Everyone keeps getting caught up in the "this program vs. that program" debate, but I agree that OP's request is totally valid. As someone who uses paint.net constantly for artwork and utilizes the layer functionality all the time, the program should still always ignore transparency, no matter if its same layer or different layer. I actually always thought this was a bug in paint.net, not a conscious choice.

 

Perfect example: I make text for a piece of art on a new layer above the art. This layer is only text on top of transparency. I decide the default spacing is a bit much, so I want to bring the top word down a bit closer to the bottom word. You would expect that I could just box selection, slide it down, and since all the "negative space" is just transparency on this layer, I could slide it right up to the bottom word and the transparency would act as transparency. But instead, it overwrites the filled pixels with transparent pixels. Again, I thought that was a bug.

 

My two options are either to do a pixel perfect selection (either zoom in really close or ctrl-click with magic wand to individually select the letters) or select, copy, paste to new layer, merge layers. Again, I thought I was just doing a bizarre workaround for a bug this whole time, did not realize it was working as designed (my friend who works as a UI consultant would say, "then the design is bad").

 

Not trying to get anyone amped up to argue about the validity of this decision. Just stating that nearly every other program always treats transparency as transparency no matter what. That has become second nature for those of us utilizing multiple programs, and I don't see why you would ever want transparency to not be transparency. It's probably because of some deep rooted way that paint.net was coded to handle layers and it may not be fixable without completely rewriting that. And it doesn't really stop me from doing anything, but it does take something that should be a simple flick of the wrist into a 3+ step problem that has to be tackled every time it's encountered.

Edited June 7, 2019 by ZomBJ
clarity

[Rick Brewster]

"Every other program" ? You'll have to be more specific. Paint.NET handles alpha just like Photoshop does.

 

In the example you gave with the text, you just have to cut the selected area and put it onto a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+X, then Ctrl+Shift+V, it's very easy), and then move it around. Your text is not "on top of" transparency, it is adjacent to it. Stop thinking of transparency as something that's "below" the colored pixels within the layer you're working on. Layers have pixels, and layers have a Z-order, but there's no faux-Z within the layer. Any other interpretation is wrong and you need to adjust your mental model to fit that.

Making things work the way you think it should work would break all sorts of other things. Like really, really badly.

 

I actually always thought this was a bug in paint.net

And now you know it's not. You've gained more understanding about how things work. Celebrate that instead of sticking to your guns that Paint.NET is "wrong".

 

I don't see why you would ever want transparency to not be transparency

See, that's the thing. Transparency is always transparency in Paint.NET. You just need to get your understanding of layers to be correct! There isn't "transparent" and then also "special transparent" within a selection, which is what you're asking for.

 

I've already said this many, many times over the last 15 years: this will not be changing. It is not a bug. It is 100% by intentional design and it is the 100% right way to do things. This issue is closed and will not be revisited, not now and not ever.

 

This reminds me of when we (as a civilization) adopted the heliocentric model of the solar system: the old way was just wrong, and fraught with all sorts of weird super-complicated corner cases (epicycles) that just seem downright silly now. Once you get past the stupidity of how MSPaint does things, and learn how the universe actually works, things are so much simpler and better -- and your toolkit becomes much more powerful.