Feature request? Feature beg.

[Sytel]

Paint.NET is an awesome program. Love it to pieces. Great stuff, really. There's just one little problem... unfortunately, that little problem renders Paint.NET unworkable for 90% of my work.

It's the transparent selection thing. Yes, I know there's a way to do it by using the magic wand and creating and pasting to new layers and all that. I also know that it's *complicated* and doesn't always work. I need to do a LOT of moving around of things, and I really need a simpler solution. Like the one MS Paint has.

What keeps me coming back to MS Paint, despite the many things it can't do or does clumsily, is its ultra-simple transparency approach. Just press a button and presto, any time you select anything the secondary color will be treated as transparent. I've never seen another program that can do this so easily, and it's a great and intuitive way of handling it.

Not that I'd like Paint.NET to use this as its *only* way of handling transparency, by any means. But it would be nice to have the option. When I've got an image full of "props" and "backgrounds" that I'm going to be repeatedly pasting overtop of one another, I need it to be quick and easy.

If this feature could be implemented, I would use Paint.NET for all my image editing needs and have no reservations about recommending it to all my friends. I would also-- this is a promise in writing-- make a large donation. I would, in short, be very happy.

Is there a chance of this?

[pdnnoob]

Don't paste things onto the white background layer. Add a new layer and paste things there to begin with so that you don't have to deal with the white background moving around. If you are looking to remove white backgrounds from images, I would suggest either the Alphaspace plugin or the Grim color reaper plugin.

[Sytel]

The problem is, a lot of the things I paste in *come with* white (or some other color) backgrounds of their own. Also, there's all sorts of handy uses for declaring one color in a selection to be transparent; for one thing, it allows me to switch up which parts are the transparent "windows", and have transparency come and go on the fly.

I know there are various ways of accomplishing these effects, but a secondary-equals-transparent switch would be a simple, quick (VERY important when doing a lot of drag-and-drop placing), and extremely welcome addition. I have seriously tried out any number of graphics programs in search of one with this one feature.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

You seem unaware that paint.net has an alpha (transparency) channel. This is an awful lot more powerful that the selection-of-a-color-as-transparent. E.g. what if you don't want all the white to be transparent in an image?

If your images come with a background - then first remove it as per one of the plugins mentioned above (there are many more that will also do the job). This will make the remainder of the image an object. That is, a group of pixels on an otherwise transparent layer. One object per layer. With an object on it's own layer you can move things around endlessly without a problem.

Layers are not complicated, and they DO work. You just need to learn how to use them. I suggest the online documentation would be a great place to start (press F1 in Paint.net).

[Sytel]

You seem unaware that paint.net has an alpha (transparency) channel. This is an awful lot more powerful that the selection-of-a-color-as-transparent.

I'm aware of it, and I know it's more powerful. It offers more options and more fine-tuning. But sometimes (read: virtually all the time) what I need is a simple, fast way of doing it. If I have a ton of selections to assemble together, I don't want to set alpha for every one of them. I want to drag and drop.

E.g. what if you don't want all the white to be transparent in an image?

Then you don't use that option. (Or you turn it on long enough to move around the parts you want to move, then turn it off or select a different secondary color, and white goes back to behaving like any other color.) It would be an *option*, something that you wouldn't have to use, but could turn on when it would make life simpler. Which is a lot of the time, for me.

Seriously, I *have* gotten it to work with the layers and the alpha, and I do know why it would sometimes be desirable to have those options, but the lack of this simple shortcut method just ruins Paint.NET for the work I want to use it for.

I'm sorry, I don't want to come across as rude, or start an argument. I think it's a great program, and I do know how to get it to do what I want it to do. It's just that a simpler method would be vastly preferable, for me. I'm just upset because this program does everything I'd like except for this one little (but crucial) thing.

[Rick Brewster]

This has been asked for before, many times. It will not be added to Paint.NET. Sorry man.

[Sytel]

Ah... OK. Sorry to re-ask what's already been asked. (I looked in the frequently requested features list and saw it wasn't there, so I figured...)

But thanks for the answer.

[pdnnoob]

In case you still want to try to keep everything within paint.net, reread my earlier reply:

I would suggest either the Alphaspace plugin or the Grim color reaper plugin.

Those two are great alternatives to what you are looking for, though they may not be as simple as they are made for a wider range of uses than what you seem to be looking for. Give it a try and see what you think

[Sytel]

It really would be great to be able to do everything in Paint.NET. I'll check out those plugins.

A plugin that *does* add the simple approach would also be very much appreciated, incidentally : )

[Ego Eram Reputo]

For simplicity, choose AlphaSpace. Generally I run it at defaults to get the result I want.