Masking Selection

[tobibeer]

Today I wished for a simple option that would allow to mask all non-selected pixels with any of the following:

Black

White

FG-Color

BG-Color

Custom-Color

Especially when croping rectangular sections this would give a cleaner impression on what the result actually looks like. This could be a single dropdown-button, integrated into the options-toolbar for selection-mode.

Also, is there a chance that in the (near) furure, selections support alpha-masks, so that instead of a pixel being either selected or not, one had an option to use certain smoothing gradients together with the standard selection tools? Or have I been missing sth. and there's a plugin that already does apply these kind of "smooth edges" in order to cut or copy a selection.

Sorry, if I wasn't quite using proper terminology.

[0(-.-)0]

You could crop to selection and then undo...

[Sozo]

To answer your second question, I don't know all of Rick's plans for developing Paint.NET, but smooth selections isn't in Rick's popular feature requests. I think it should be though, I know it has been requested in the past.

[Sarkut]

tobibeer,

I recognize that you would prefer these to be features of Paint.NET.

================================================

For anyone interested in work-arounds - To have the area

outside the selection be masked while positioning to crop:

First decide on an area that you know will be excluded

from the crop.

Make a new layer and fill it with white.

(Or whatever color you prefer)

Make a tiny Rectangular selection in the area to be excluded

and press Delete.

Magic Wand inside the deleted rectangle, then activate the

Move Selected Pixels tool.

You can move the selection, resize it, and change its

aspect ratio, while the area outside the selection

remains blocked from view.

When it looks right - Crop to Selection.

[tobibeer]

That's a cool technique. Simple work-arounds aren't the worst idea after all.

It seems, though, that resizing and moving a selection is more ressource-intensive than making one.

Also, am I missing something or does it actually make more sense to delete that rectange (or other) WITHIN the area which you want to keep?

Tobias.

tobibeer,

For anyone interested in work-arounds - To have the area

outside the selection be masked while positioning to crop:

First decide on an area that you know will be excluded

from the crop.

Make a new layer and fill it with white.

(Or whatever color you prefer)

Make a tiny Rectangular selection in the area to be excluded

and press Delete.

Magic Wand inside the deleted rectangle, the activate the

Move Selected Pixels tool.

You can move the selection, resize it, and change its

aspect ratio, while the area outside the selection

remains blocked from view.

When it looks right - Crop to Selection.

[Sarkut]

does it actually make more sense to delete that rectange (or other) WITHIN the area which you want to keep?

Yes, you are quite right.

[tobibeer]

You could crop to selection and then undo...

I know... but that's the kind of click'n'wait I was hoping to avoid, especially with pixel intensive images.

Since a certain update - though I couldn't tell since when, I believe it came with some dotNET Update or the last major update of pdn - performance of (many) basic actions seems to have dropped rather drastically.

So, maybe I'm actually having a performace issue here, which of course would improve if I got to upgrade my single-core 2GHZ to something more recent / decent.

Just to give you an idea, cropping a 3648x2736 image to let's say 3000x2000 easily takes 10 seconds and so does the undo.

[0(-.-)0]

Aah. I understand.