Highlight Control in Screenshot

[JeffFerguson]

I have taken a screenshot of a dialog in Windows and I want to manipulate it so that one of the controls on the dialog is highlighted. One effect that I have seen other screenshots take is to darken most of the screenshot, leaving the control to which the viewer's attention should be drawn in its original color. The image at http://blog.tomayac.de/images/Google_REST_Describe_request_test.png is close to the effect I want to achieve -- darken some areas of the screenshot and leave other areas in their original color, thereby bringing attention to the undarkened areas.

How might I acheive this effect in Paint.NET? I am new to the app, so feel free to point me to tutorials if I need to learn about layers or some other aspects of the app.

Thank you!

[Rick Brewster]

Another way would be to create a new layer, fill it with black, and lower the opacity of that layer. Then, select the area that's over the control, and delete it.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

There are many ways to skin a cat, but you only get to try one method per cat. Paint.net is more forgiving in this respect

[johoe]

you can select the larger area, hold Alt to de-select the smaller portion

copy and paste it as a new layer (Ctrl+C then Ctrl+Shift+V)

open colors -> more, and set alpha transparency to about 80

fill selection (Backspace) and merge layer down (Ctrl+M)

and to select additional areas of the screen without losing the previous selected area hold Ctrl

Edited July 7, 2011 by johoe

[MadJik]

In another kind of UI work:

I add a new layer with a blend mode multiply or color burn.

Then I just draw yellow filled rounded rectangle to hilight some area/buttons...

I also use the gravity plugin to reduce the image size without losing information : set "erase similar lines" to on.

To reduce even more you'll need to unify the header and the side (one color instead the gradients).