Lightning plug in

[shortstan]

I was wondering if paint.net has a plug-in that will let you designing lightning bolts like ulead has? It would be nice to have one that can do Transparency that are quite large.

Shorty

[PineappleQc]

Can you provide an example of what you are trying to accomplish? There are many tutorials available for making Lighting Bolts.

[csm725]

And questions like this go in the General Discussion forum. Thank you.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

No, there is no plugin. There is a nice single layer technique:

1. Draw a linear gradient across your canvas. The lightning will track approx 90 degrees to an imaginary line connecting the control nubs.

2. Effects>Render>Clouds Blend mode of difference. Use the default settings for now, but later on you will find that fiddling with the Scale & Roughness will give you a smoother/coarser final effect.

3. Invert colors with CTRL+SHIFT+I (or find it on the Adjustments menu).

4. Adjustments>Levels: on the right hand side, pull the middle slider down to the bottom. The left sliders control the width (top slider) and glow (bottom slider). Play with these to get a nice effect.

5. Adjustments>Curves Under RGB option, remove ticks from the colors you don't want to use/see. Move the curve to color your lightning. Hint - deselect green and move both the middle of the red & blue lines a fraction above the default line. I got this tip from BoltBait who correctly noted that lightning has a purplish tint.

How does that look?

I don't recall where I found this technique. Apologies to the original contributor.