Creating a white outline on a cut-out image?

[HeatinMyHarbl]

Hello, I'm new to paint.net. On a crazy whim the other night, I decided to make a forum signature of my character for a game I play, here is the finished product:

Now, what I did was take a screenshot my character in game, cut him out, and then I fooled around with the effects for literally hours trying to figure out how to get a white outline on him. I finally found an effect that did that, but I completely forget what it was (it wasn't outline, I know that for a fact). I then put him on a seperate layer as the background and the text, and just merged the layers into one when I was finished, and for my first project I think it turned out pretty good.

Now, my issue is, I went to make a background of one of my favorite NHL players, Ray Emery (some of you may know who he is), and I tried to do the same thing. I got a picture of him online, cut him out, and fooled around with the effects trying to create a white outline for him again. The background was going to be dark orange and black, so I wanted a white outline. I tried EVERY single effect mutliple times, and could NOT figure out how to create that white outline on the selection like I did for the signature I made.

If somebody could please explain to me how I did it for my signature, or an easier way to create an outline color of your choice on any selected picture or photo, that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[APShredder]

Are you sure you didn't use Outline Object?

[Frontcannon]

Outline Object

Obvious name for an obvious reason.

Edit: Beaten :o

[HeatinMyHarbl]

Uh. Thanks for the heads up, but no, I didn't use outline object, considering I had just downloaded Paint.NET, and had no idea there were extra plug-ins even available. Weird.