Is it possible to turn off Draw Opaque, like in MS Paint?

[SHMCMINN]

Is it possible to turn off Draw Opaque, like in MS Paint?

[Rick Brewster]

Layers are your friend. Paint.NET provides much more sophisticated means for doing anything that MS Paint ever wished it could.

[SHMCMINN]

Er....could you tell me how then?

[Rick Brewster]

There's an entire help file you can read through ...

[SHMCMINN]

Well, thanks for being so incredibly helpful...

[Crazy Man Dan]

The help file was created so people wouldn't have to answer the same questions multiple times. It requires some work on your part, but it is there for you. Getting mad at Rick for pointing you to somewhere where the answer to your question is already explained for you doesn't really make much sense...

However:

To overlay pieces with transparent parts over each other, click the New Layer button (the leftmost button at the bottom of the Layers Stack window) and paste the first piece into the new layer. By not using the background layer, you save yourself the hassle of the piece merging with the default white background. This also allows you to change the background without having to work around the pasted part.

Then create another new layer and paste the second piece there. Now you'll have three layers, the Background with the background color in it, Layer 1 with the first piece in it, and Layer 2 with the second piece in it. Repeat this process of creating new layers and pasting the pieces into the new layers for as many pieces as you have. You may want to name your layers for each piece depending upon how many you have, as it will be easier to tell which piece is which. To do this, double-click the layer and type a new Name into the box.

Now, switch to the Rectangle Select tool, click on the layer of the piece you want to move, draw a marquee around the piece, switch to the Move Selected Pixels tool, and drag the piece around. Repeat this for all your pieces, being sure to switch to the proper layer before trying to move a piece.

Layers are much more useful than Draw Opaque because you can still independantly edit each piece after the pieces have been composited. In MS Paint, once you drag the selection over an area with art already on it, the art and whatever was selected are replaced with the composite of the two. So, if you later want to move part of it, tricky Lasso Selection work would be the only way. With Layers in Paint.NET, you can drag a selection around the whole image, and you'll only affect what is on that layer.

If you'd like a detailed explaination of how to make this technique work in a specific situation, just let me know the situation, and I'd be happy to answer.

Dan

[SHMCMINN]

Sorry, didn't mean to get mad, I was in kind of a bad mood

What I meant was how to make the white around an image that you copy online completely transparent. In MS paint you can just turn off draw opaque. Is there something similar to that in paint.NET?

[Crazy Man Dan]

Well, if it's all white around the image, you can use the Magic Wand to select the white color, then delete it.

If it's an antialiased edge (smooth and blended), you may want to use the Magic Wand at a low tolerance, then use the eraser to clean up the extra around the edges.

You may have to mess around with the Tolerance (blue bar under the tools and above the colors on the Tools palette) to get it just right so it only selects the pixels you want, but it works for what you're looking for.

Hope that helps!

Dan

[SHMCMINN]

Thanks, that helps. On an unrelated note, how do you make an edge antialiased?

[RaveN]

Find the box that has a diagonal line through it, hold mouse over it and wait for description, and then click it off.

[Crazy Man Dan]

For images cut out in PDN, it's a little more tricky. The way I do it:

1. Get the cut out how you want it, and make sure it's on its own layer. Position, rotation, color, all that stuff.

2. Duplicate the layer with the cut out on it.

3. Move the duplicated layer behind the original cut out layer.

4. Blur the duplicated layer with a radius of 2px or so. For very large images, you may have to raise the radius.

5. Duplicate the blurred layer until it looks nice and smooth.

Now, I know there are some other ways to do this, some I think involving Sharpening, that use fewer layers. Unfortunately, I am not familiar with any of these. I think they're posted here on the forum, somewhere...

[RaveN]

I blur too much, I am addicted to gaussian blur.

[BoltBait]

Thanks, that helps. On an unrelated note, how do you make an edge antialiased?

There is a nice tutorial on how to do it here:

http://paintdotnet.12.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=1886

[SHMCMINN]

thank you