Paint.net's contrast is different from Nvidia CP's contrast

[frer8833]

I like Nvidia Contol Panel's contrast slider because it provides a better picture quality when lowering the contrast, in comparison when contrast is lowered in Paint.net the picture becomes brown and loses details. I want to lower the contrast of a picture even more than is possible with Nvidia CP so I tried to do it in Paint.net but the quality was not good.

 

Is there a plugin which retains a better quality of the picture when lowering the contrast. What can I do to retain picture quality? Do I need to adjust other variables, like exposure, brightness, shadows, highlights?

 

BTW how can I preset PNG as save format?

Edited June 16 by frer8833

[Tactilis]

57 minutes ago, frer8833 said:

how can I preset PNG as save format?

If you open and edit an existing image, for example a .jpg, then Ctrl+S / Save will always save to the same file name and file type.

For a new image paint.net will default to saving in .pdn format if your image contains multiple layers or to .png format if it has just a single layer.

 

If you want to save a .jpg image as .png, then you need to do Ctrl+Shift+S / Save As which will create a new file and use the .pdn or .png defaults as described above.

 

 

 

[Tactilis]

1 hour ago, frer8833 said:

I like Nvidia Contol Panel's contrast slider because it provides a better picture quality when lowering the contrast, in comparison when contrast is lowered in Paint.net the picture becomes brown and loses details.

It would be helpful if you posted a (cropped) screenshot of an image showing:

• Original image
• Nvidia Control Panel reduced contrast
• paint.net reduced contrast

so we could see the effect you wish to achieve and what is lacking in when you use paint.net

[Rick Brewster]

PDN’s Contrast adjustment dates back to 2004 (maybe 2005?) and is not necessarily a good implementation. Changing it now would be disruptive to many people’s workflows though.

 

It should be easy for someone to craft a little plugin in CodeLab that uses Direct2D’s ContrastEffect ( https://paintdotnet.github.io/apidocs/api/PaintDotNet.Direct2D1.Effects.ContrastEffect.html ) to see if it’s better.