BmB23 Posted November 16, 2006 Posted November 16, 2006 Hi, I'm new here. I have a few qualms about the pen tool, I feel it's a tad limited. First there's the lack of feathering. Feathering would be really good. Using gaussian blur is too tedious and often gets you a subpar result that is not quite what you hoped for. It's limitations to 100 px, as well as a lot of other tools limit of 100 px could be a problem, especially with larger pictures. Lack of the ability to draw straight lines is a tad annoying, I know line tool can do that, but it is also a more tedious procedure and clumsy result. Transparancy looks really ugly with the clearly visible circles ontop of each other and you often have to take the transparancy really high (or opacity low) for it to actually look transparant. Some optional flash-ish smoothing of the line would be great, yeah, I know line tool can do smooth too, but only with four control points it's rather limited what you can do. I'd probably use The GIMP for all of these effects, but The GIMP sucks, don't get me wrong it's a good image editing software quite on par with photoshop. It's just the way it works with Windows is equivalent to that of a low threat virus. Quote
TinSoldier Posted November 16, 2006 Posted November 16, 2006 What's the difference between feathering and anti-aliasing with the paint brush? Quote
BmB23 Posted November 16, 2006 Author Posted November 16, 2006 Feathering is meant for fading the edges to whatever amount you'd like. EDIT: the advantage to this is that usually feathering is blurring inwards while gaussian is just blurring, you have much more control of exactly where it goes. Antialias is just that, against harsh edges. It's the equivalent of a less than 1 px blur really. It's still supposed to be sharp. Quote
TinSoldier Posted November 16, 2006 Posted November 16, 2006 Thanks for the explanation. One thing you might try is BoltBait's Feather Plugin. It only works at the edge between a color and transparent but I use it to smooth edges when I cut pictures out of a background. If you draw your lines on their own layer then you might be able to get the effect you want. Not perfect, but still pretty good. Quote
BoltBait Posted November 16, 2006 Posted November 16, 2006 Some optional flash-ish smoothing of the line would be great, yeah, I know line tool can do smooth too, but only with four control points it's rather limited what you can do. Try this: Once you draw a line, use the right mouse button on the middle two nubs. It turns the line into a bezier curve. When you learn how to control a bezier curve you will be much happier. Quote Download: BoltBait's Plugin Pack | CodeLab | and a Free Computer Dominos Game
BmB23 Posted November 16, 2006 Author Posted November 16, 2006 Nuh uh, then I'm better off with gaussian blur. And that's still no real good. There's also the lasso selection tool wich is fairly useless for other than rough shape selection, a photoshop style "polygonal lasso selection" would be absolutely gorgeus. That could also be used for the freeform shape tool. I knew thta boltbait, as I said it's only four control points wich doesn't really do wonders for other than simple curves. What I was talking about was automatically smoothing your jaggy curves so that you could make any complex smooth shape you wanted. Quote
TinSoldier Posted November 16, 2006 Posted November 16, 2006 Thought on feathering: If Rick does improve the brush to have that feature, would it make sense to link it to the tolerance value? Quote
Rick Brewster Posted November 17, 2006 Posted November 17, 2006 Interesting comments. Just remember there is something of a 5 year backlog on features at this point... the point being, please don't hold your breath. Quote The Paint.NET Blog: https://blog.getpaint.net/ Donations are always appreciated! https://www.getpaint.net/donate.html
BmB23 Posted November 17, 2006 Author Posted November 17, 2006 Hmm, yeah. I also find the lack of merging layers kindof limiting. You can only merge everything or nothing. Add a more standard noise distortion filter and a rotoscoping, or "filmstrip" capability along with the other things and you pretty much have the ultimate image editor. Yes yes, rome wasn't built in a day I know. Quote
TinSoldier Posted November 17, 2006 Posted November 17, 2006 Hmm, yeah.I also find the lack of merging layers kindof limiting. You can only merge everything or nothing. 3.0 Alpha 3 has a feature where you can merge two layers together without merging the rest of them. It's called, unsurprisingly, "merge down".Add a more standard noise distortion filter and a rotoscoping, or "filmstrip" capability along with the other things and you pretty much have the ultimate image editor.Yes yes, rome wasn't built in a day I know. A lot of this stuff could probably be done with plugins. Have you thought about writing them yourself?I need to play with learning how to do plugins as well. Quote
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